Lilacs “with many a pointed blossom” and “heart-shaped leaves”
placed into a clear vase accompanied by two lemons, a blue and gold mug
a yellow-green drinking glass, and a long neck vase arranged upon a table
covered with a light blue tablecloth in a room with a mullion window

Outside “lilacs dripping blackly behind houses and on curbsides” tell
the story of water and how we try to capture it in vessels of many shapes.
They tell the story of light and how we try to capture it through windows
and through its reflection off fruit and flowers and things of beauty.

Is there a message here beyond this moment of beauty?
Why would an artist choose to paint a still life when there are
so many things to be said, so many images to make one ponder?
Does beauty alone make art? Is beauty in itself enough?

Lilacs have been used in elegy, to mourn the death of those
we loved. They give us a way to express demise and move through
sadness when “the mind is unreliable in grief.”
So many things of beauty grant us relief from life’s sorrows.