Paring the Apple

Brita Granstrom, "Boy Peeling Apples"

Paring the Apple

There are portraits and still-lifes.

And there is paring the apple.

And then? Paring it slowly,
From under cool-yellow
Cold-white emerging. And...?

The Spring of concentric peel
Unwinding off white,
The blade hidden, dividing.

There are portraits and still-lifes
And the first, because "human"
Does not excel the second, and
Neither is less weighted
With a human gesture, than paring the apple
With a human stillness.

The cool blade
Severs between coolness, apple-rind
Compelling a recognition.

Charles Tomlinson

Oh I like this one. So cleverly showing how our system of categories, of arranging things so that we feel we have a grasp of what they are and where they fit, well, it doesn't work. It doesn't cover all the subtleties, the idiosyncrasies, the distinctions. Here we have a portrait that has elements of still life, or, we could also say a still life with human qualities. I find it so intricate how Tomlinson talks about the knife dividing between things - paring and dividing are such human activities - showing how even as we separate and delineate objects, we reveal their likenesses and similarities. Without realizing it, we participate in a mysterious unifying and mirroring element, Even as we endeavor to classify and categorize and seek to understand, we step deeper into the mystery. Lovely to think about, if you ask me.

Just to be clear - I don't claim to know what a poem means, I merely enjoy it and make whatever sense of it comes to me. It's quite likely that I miss the point of it entirely. Some poet is laughing at me right now, or would be, if only they knew what I was writing here.