Day Two-Napowrimo-Woman Who Rode Away

Day 2 of NaPoWriMo

Write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time (like a Sonny & Cher song in a poem about a Greek myth).

I decided to address Georgia O'Keeffee herself and write about her as she is one of my favourite artists.

Red Hills and Bones, 1941 by Georgia O'Keeffe
image:https://www.georgiaokeeffe.net/

Woman Who Rode Away

Look at you, Georgia

You turned a hermit

With those white walls and long halls

Those painted canvas and the framed window

You turned inwards and outwards, all at the same time.

 

How I envy you!

 

Picking the heat and the scattered skulls

You were more Zen than any person I can think of

The black door lending mystery and a frame

Providing a witchotization* of an intriguing backdrop

The long black box (1) adding a dash of humour.

 

The window overlooking the mountains

Frame within a frame, seeking you as you seek them

I can feel the longing you felt for the Red Hills in your bones,

Canna red and orange, the white birch in autumn, the pink tulips—

They grow in me as Blue and Green music.

 

Under the evening star, under the Starlight Night

You dream as a meteor shower painting into thin air

Conjuring forms from the nothingness of time and space

Holding the life force within like a time capsule ready to burst

From eons past and you stand here in the future.

 

And here I am, conjuring you.

*(witchy exotization)

(1)the long black box -  it is said that O'Keeffe chose the Casa for the black door which appears in several of her photographs behind which was nothing else but her storage space. People often thought of the black door as mysterious. She continued the theme of black in her studio space where she had a long black box that contained nothing but her art materials. There was no mystery there. I guess, she just had a sense of humour.