Slightly bruised around the edges, lush <br />and ripe, you are quite ready to be taken <br />like fresh fruit in a basket, but a hush <br />has overtaken you, as if forsaken. <br />When I describe the way that you appear <br />to me I wonder why you aren’t amused. <br />If my description of you were austere <br />perhaps your feelings would not have been bruised. <br />I won’t dwell on the flaws around your edges; <br />to mention them I know is very wrong; <br />invested in you, like a fund that hedges, <br />I won’t go short on you, for whom I long. <br /> <br />Christopher Knight writes about an exhibition of the work of Rembrandt and Caravaggio in Amsterdam (“Principals in a pageant of painting, ” LA Times, March 26,2006) . Describing a Caravaggio painting, “ he Boy With a Basket, ” Mario Minitti, a Sicilian painter who was the artist’s lover, Knight writes: <br /> <br />The lighting is fairly described as histrionic, and the young man––costumed, coiffed, and carrying a prop–emotes to the painting’s intended audience-of-one like an actor on a stage. Like something out of Playgirl magazine, with his off-the-shoulder robe and gentle swoon, he offers himself to a viewer like a basket of fruit; ripe, lush, slightly bruised around the edges, ready to be taken. <br /> <br />3/27/06<br /><br />gershon hepner<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/slightly-bruised/
