I’m not sure why I did this, except that I felt energetic this morning, like I was coming out of a fog (post-Thanksgiving funk?). The fruit looked sleek and display-able, and the basket was on the kitchen table, holding napkins, and suddenly it seemed a crime to keep the fruit in its net bags and not in this pretty braided ceramic basket-bowl that Ellen gave me several Christmases ago.

So the napkins now sit in a pile on the table and the fruit poses on the counter. It’s become a still life, an object not just of utility but of beauty.

Isn’t the best kind of beauty the accidental kind? The graceful arching of tree limbs over a road. The glitter of icicles in the sun. And the gathering of fruit in a bowl.