More Sky Than Earth
(A poem ending in a paraphrase of Georgia O’Keefe)
Purple Petunia is my own,
a petal to slide down, a dark center
to crawl in beneath the seeds.
Here are my mother’s thigh to cling to,
a teacher’s ruby word, and the labium,
oh all the labium of the all women I’ve held and hoped
to hold in the hidden pockets of day.
If I could only stop there Georgia, but in your sunset & moonrise
I see myself angled, sectioned waiting for the sun
to set behind your radiator building.
Where the world waits with all its varied lights —
the super rosins her bow, her treble bounds down the hall
past the newlyweds unpacking their baggage,
to the dealer weighing her tweak,
up the fire escape the architect sketches a tree —
It’s for the bereaved the smoke rises. In the distance
the searchlights beckon me down streets
where I too picked flowers, picked seashells,
rocks and pieces of wood. I ate around the holes
of donuts, raisins in cookies, saving the best for last.
When I hold your pelvic bone up in the sun I see the sky blue,
the blue it will always be, as it is now,
after all man’s destruction has ceased.
