Skip to main content

Winter Cottonwoods East V

“Well, I made you take time to look at what I saw…” – Georgia O’Keeffe


1954 - she paints canvas
I test young legs
later we intersect
at Winter Cottonwoods East V
where a simple landscape
of burnt umber
raw sienna
mars brown
belies my assumption
for sleeping sap
absorbs me
in fresh wintry light

more in smudged paint
than fine line
she imparts a
deep alchemy
between
tree and sky
each broad stem
tapers to blur
like fabric frayed
in steady wind
each breath trades
sky for tree

desert canyons
send me home
full of sage and tammies
edges smudged
by steady diet
of wild water
strong light
her trees replace
my mirror - I am
winter cottonwoods
finding old folds
like new roots in granite

2004 -I rest
tired legs
she is canvas
we meet at the edges
swap moments as
maiden – mother - crone
breathe in
burnt umber
raw sienna
mars brown
trust a naked alchemy
my mirror- her trees

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.