Joanne Durham
Small Table in Evening Dusk
(after a painting by Henri Eugene Augustin Le Sidaner)
How could you not wish this to be your life?
Small wooden table, antique blue.
Two wicker chairs, a bottle of wine,
two peaches plucked from a tree
that’s borne them perfectly ripe for centuries,
Small wooden table, antique blue.
Two wicker chairs, a bottle of wine,
two peaches plucked from a tree
that’s borne them perfectly ripe for centuries,
by a canal in France winding towards
the sea past houses with unlatched shutters,
the light on in one, others
not rushing to quench the coming darkness.
How could you not want to live
right in the center of the curve, your view
softened into the distance? For this
to be your life, you would, of course, need
to love the person who leans across
the table after supper and takes your hand,
or relish the extra peach alone. And if
you view it all from a bench
in a museum in Chicago, your mind
might drift to your paltry French,
your expired passport, limited funds,
all the people you’d have to reach
across an ocean to touch.
in a museum in Chicago, your mind
might drift to your paltry French,
your expired passport, limited funds,
all the people you’d have to reach
across an ocean to touch.
Then perhaps you would sigh and purchase
a passable reproduction
of “Small Table in Evening Dusk”
in the gift shop on your way home.
a passable reproduction
of “Small Table in Evening Dusk”
in the gift shop on your way home.
Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022) and On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay 2023). A Pushcart nominee, her poems appear in James Crews’ anthology, The Wonder of Small Things, Poetry South, Poetry East, Whale Road Review, CALYX, and many other journals and anthologies. Recent awards include Third Wednesday’s annual poetry contest and the Mary Ruffin Poole Prize. She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. https://www.joannedurham.com/