Still Life with Teapots

For prompt--" I have always been afraid of"--so many choices, so little time

Still Life with Teapots

I have always been afraid
of a still life.
A still life isn't something
you just throw together.
One element gone wrong
and you've wonked the whole composition.

A gathering of teapots, so mundane,
so homey and domestic
might after all
evoke the abbatoir--
leaving you naked and reeling
from the multiplicity of choices.

Do I pick the creamy white,
so round and fervently female
it seems filled with milk?
Or choose the tall, sleek, silvery
mid-century modern, as spare
as the silence after a tolling bell?
Dare I select the cobalt blue
so like Aladdin's lamp
if you rubbed its surface
a genie should appear?
What would be my one fervent wish?

Things weary, things break, things fade away.
How to decide what to save?

I have always been afraid
of a still life.
A life isn't something
you just throw together.


A finalist in the Poetic Idol competition at https://www,artellawordsandart.com