I love Georgia O'Keeffe more and more each year. Here's a poem I wrote about her at least ten years ago. I know I've posted it before, but it is one of my favorite poems of mine:
Georgia O’Keeffe Looks Over Her
Shoulder
Just when she thinks she’s
painted all her fear,
When bleached skulls turn to
poppies red as lust,
The sound of something wild
attracts her ear.
Black jacket, white soft collar
curving near
the place where desert sunset
turns to rust
awakens in that neck a
prickling fear.
The haunches of dead lovers
gleam as clear
in skulls as in the orchid’s
velvet crust.
Dry rattling of bone curls back
her ear.
Her upswept silken hair
declares the year
in shades of gray and tortoise
brown as dust
just when she thought she’d
painted all her fear.
Her thin pink pearl of seashell
curves to hear
the desert’s voice, more
fierce, more dry than just
as three fine wrinkles flow
down from her ear.
Such gaunt grace turns her,
luscious and severe,
containing bones and orchids,
fruit and crust!
Just when she thinks she’s
painted all her fear,
the sound of something wild
attracts her ear.
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Anyway, it is now officially October. Gorgeous day. Still far from frost. The asters are blooming.
Here's an October poem by W.S. Merwin:
"A child looking at ruins grows younger
but cold
and wants to wake to a new name
I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring
walnut and may leaves the color
of shoulders at the end of summer
a month that has been to the mountain
and become light there
the long grass lies pointing uphill
even in death for a reason
that none of us knows
and the wren laughs in the early shade now
come again shining glance in your good time
naked air late morning
my love is for lightness
of touch foot feather
the day is yet one more yellow leaf
and without turning I kiss the light
by an old well on the last of the month
gathering wild rose hips
in the sun."
- W. S. Merwin, The Love of October
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