Georgia O'Keefe

I

Even New York is reduced
to black with stark
contrasts: white, gray,
sepia shades of morning
in a long windowless canyon
sieved of cars and walkers,
its rushing distilled to light
streaks below the neolithic black;
whitened eyes, curved horns
mark it ancient, alien:
solid judgement of our petty
scurrying lives,
invisible under the thick
black of O'Keeffe's city.

II

What moves me is the simplicity
and brightness
in the center of absence.
Under the bright pink, red, blue
all stark and unshaded
lurks always the sun—
and sand-scoured bone
that pours out color.
Life that has been bled
into purity,
shape almost hidden,
sanded from the objects
to become color, arc.
Essence and accident
are both lost.
Only color and shape
remain, thin and translucent
as watercolor on paper
or breath on skin:
our lives against the deep
weight of Earth
grounded in whirling space.

M. Doretta Cornellis a Sister of the Divine Compassion and Associate Professor of English at Pace University, Pleasantville, NY. Her poems have appeared in The National Catholic Reporter, /Review For Religious/, Connecticut River Review, HazMat, and Red River Review.