On a Picture by Cézanne

There’s no description in the braided stone, the pear, the stone in the pear, the birchbark, bread hills on the snowfall tablecloth. The dog of work gnaws the day’s short bone, snarls a mountainside into lavender and green. In the mind where objects vanish, almost is all. Element of pitcher, sky, rockface, blank canvas plastic and vast in one off-center patch. To copy what’s invisible, to improvise a soul of things and remake solid life into fresh anxious unlifelike form.