Georgia, Your Hands

Chris at Enchanted Oak is taking the Poetry Bus on a tour of sunny California this week, and she has given us a pictorial challenge. Georgia O'Keeffe's hands are the subject of both the picture and my poem.

O'Keeffe was married to the famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and they both scandalized society by some of the photos of her that he took and displayed (not to mention their unusual lifestyle). Stieglitz photographed O'Keeffe off and on for years, so we have a wonderful chronicle of her changing landscape as we see the progression of her subjects and her art.

One of my favorite photos of O'Keeffe shows a young woman, her hair loose around her shoulders, clasping a white silk gown at her breast. This is the first time I've seen the picture of her hands.

Georgia, Your Hands

When you stand so solid in the light
your hands crossed over your heart,
hair around your shoulders, Georgia,
white silk robe clasped loose across your breasts,
coal black eyes  held tight into the lens
like the eyes of the night,
it is your hands,  your long lean fingers
that crush and mix and brush the pigments
against the smooth white canvas
caressing it like silk, your strong, bold fingers
opening  yourself like an iris or a  poppy
or a white trumpet flower
that  feel deep into the yellow white of bones
that stroke the browns and lights of desert shadow sun;
it is your hands prying and pulling at their own skin
peeling away the layers of faraway city and desert,
your eyes, your hair, your white silk robe
until you too are nothing but bone,
bone and bone and stamen and sepal and sand.