George Henry Hall decided to become an artist at the age of 16, and eight years later, proceeds from the sales of his paintings enabled him to go on the first of many trips to Europe. While he loved the continent, during the course of his life, he seemed to fall in and out of love with still lifes. However, it’s known he held an exhibition of still lifes in the early 1860s in Seville.
If you like this still life, I have two other poems based on George Henry Hall works – Lemons and A Pomegranate, Siena.
More of my ekphrastic poetry here. More on free verse here.
A Peach, Seville
With a doubled red blush,
exponential, slow ripening growth,
a few months from bloom to harvest,
firmness, meltiness, juiciness,
and sucrose, fructose, glucose
balancing out malate, citrate, quinate,
aroma-filled by lactones and esters,
texture and size set at cellular basis,
boasting the rosacea family of hormones,
a genetic weighty soft abundance,
my heart was a peach –
raw, juiced, jellied, canned.
©elsp 2026
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