How to O’Keeffe
Hold a bone to the sky
and blue unfurls its grace.
Forget scale. Nothing
is low or high, whole or half.
Spine, tree, cliff: seams
sewn into space.
Ears, first cousin to snails,
whirl rivers in circles;
fingers, rightly seen, are ferns.
Speak, and petals fall,
not words. This bleached light
strips chaos clean, corrects
our idle worry, our mistaking
burial for dead.
*
Ruth Hoberman is a writer living in Newtonville, Massachusetts. Since her 2015 retirement from Eastern Illinois University, she has published poems and essays in various journals, most recently Salamander, RHINO, and Nixes Mate.
‘Ears, first cousin to snails’ — what a great line!
Surreal and beautiful Ruth. (Carla Schwartz)
thanks so much, Carla!
Speak, and petals fall, not words!
Thank you for sharing this embodiment of O’Keeffe’s desert spirit.
thanks for this! I love the evolution of this poem, how it opens on the page
Your excellent first and last lines! I can see it so well.
Love this ekphrastic poem, especially the lines “This bleached light/ strips chaos clean.
So transcendent. Inspired, I want to paint a poem (yours) – or attempt it