Georgia O’Keeffe Looks Over Her Shoulder by Anne Higgins

postcard. photographer unknown.

Georgia O’Keeffe Looks Over Her Shoulder

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.
 
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.
 
 Anne Higgins

Previously published in Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky, Plain View Press, 2007.