Georgia O’Keeffe, 1945
The desert is a lion-colored seam.
Not a finger of dust lines sills—
not a spine or lizard scale.
It could be any thumb-shaped blur
against the window pane.
Sexton. Thief.
Before villagers bring stems
sliced beneath cold faucets
someone has to sweep.
Someone lights the long, pitched roof
like the hold of a ship,
stacks books beneath each bench.
Because the face held
by the hand recedes,
it could be the soul itself
gazing out of the Santo Niño church,
beyond clay erasures.
One month, news kept looping
the same reel of the last wreck.
Men roamed like beekeepers
in their white suits.
I pictured walls radiating gold—
the church with its slant door.
Someone listening
for a distant thundering.
© Karen Rigby
View the painting at North Carolina Museum of Art.