Three Studies of a Lemon

For an imagined exercise, set a lemon
on a square of dark blue cloth.
Give three makers time with it,
and let each choose a different beginning.

The writer starts with weight:
how something small can settle in a palm.
Then comes the sharpness waiting under the skin,
a sentence tightening before it opens.
A word can offer what the eye cannot see.

The painter leaves the name alone.
One side is yellow; another nearly green.
A pale mark interrupts the rind.
The shadow makes no effort to be beautiful,
but without it the lemon seems to float.

The musician rolls it once across the table:
a brief uneven rhythm, then a stop.
That is a possible beginning,
not a sound every lemon owes the world.
The phrase may wander somewhere else entirely.

The conversation asks for separate ways to develop
language, image, music. Let the differences work.
One method need not swallow the others
to make their meeting worth the trouble.
They can exchange questions
without surrendering their tools.

Then, in this imagined scene,
someone cuts the lemon.

The room acquires a scent
none of the studies had supplied.
There is still something left
to meet directly.