Grapes.(Poem)

 
GRAPES 
 
   Even in the night time larder 
   when flamboyant tomatoes and arresting 
   bottle necks give in to vagueness 
 
   each grape is an exuberant wink. 
   I imagine the beguiling capsules pricked, 
   skins wrinkling as they leak 
 
   though they look certain as glass 
   as if plucked from the cornucopian table 
   of a seventeenth century still life. 
 
   Beyond the back door the once 
   prolific pear tree and the metallic strip 
   of moon are motionless. I could believe 
 
   nothing in the world is moving anywhere 
   but there is no standing still, not even 
   on these shelves. Tomorrow 
 
   the Moroccan bowl with fish swimming 
   a yellow sea may lose the last 
   of its cargo of cherries and when I reach 
 
   for the muesli cannister I might elbow 
   the split lentils ...