O'Keeffe: Days in a Life

Poems 76-100

76 I was sitting on top of the patio well in the sun facing the black door. O’Keeffe came through the passage under the Japanese shell wind chimes back from the garden where she supervised two men from the village her black suit sturdy brown leather shoes rosewood cane and tan gloves grey-black hair twisted at the nape of her neck dignity of many years if slightly uncertain step past the black door up the steps down the passage toward the studio. She stopped and mused over the damp patch of mud in the wall where the Mayan face had been stuck but fell out. She wondered aloud where they put the face. March, 1978 77 Sunday morning O’Keeffe and I discussed how to find your own voice, your own vision. I argued a painter can get off alone and work in color but a writer must use words which requires a community of minds, you write to a community of minds, I said. She spoke harshly, very loudly, “Do you think that community of minds cares a moment for what you have to say? Of course they don’t!” She answered herself. She said I was writing like others told me said it was a very difficult thing to listen to yourself and write from that said the key is free time. Give yourself an hour or two a day. all to yourself everyone has free time but they don’t use it I said I have time when I am walking to school—she said that wasn’t free yes I was walking, but I was walking to— that wasn’t free time. March, 1978 78 O’Keeffe said, “This is the last meal we will have together.” I said, “Yes, for this trip” possibility of immanent death outlined everything distinctly from everything else for some moments I noticed many details about her gestures her clothes, her jaw chewing. Saturday, watched her sleep in warm sun Sunday after lunch we sat on a bench in the sun back to back white down pillow between us a honey bee buzzed my underarms and face our heads and upper backs touching she wore a floppy straw hat. March, 1978 79 Frightens me to think of O’Keeffe dying just walked into the studio sat in white covered chair opposite the bed where she is sleeping dressed in black —blue shoes— brown soft wooly coverlet woven from chow dog fur over her legs grey hair blends with white pillow deep window sill behind her with gracefully curved long horns and beyond all that the land—the emptiness. April, 1978 80 In O’Keeffe’s bedroom on the wall by the fireplace attached to the dark brown wall one very composed right hand of a Buddha given Miss O’Keeffe by Richard who lives near Taos with his Arabian horses. Last night she told me it used to be broken and one of the middle fingers would move back and forth. She sent it to be fixed when it returned a special something it had was lost—gone now it’s just a hand. It had a patina on black like lacquer or enamel slightly upturned fingers seems the hand of a blessing palm outward long long fingers like Miss O’Keeffe’s. April, 1978 81 I walked slowly carefully to O’Keeffe dressed in black sitting on a log near the cliffs kneeling beside her played a few notes on my flute she said my playing reminded her of walking in mountains of Peru where boys would come out of nowhere playing their high flutes she reminisced how she drove a station wagon up to the cliffs just beyond where we were sitting slept several nights in the back where she could get up early, make breakfast, immediately start painting. After sitting awhile we quietly walked back, discussing the direction of the cool wind. April, 1978 82 This time I brought O’Keeffe a pineapple and an Ikebana arrangement of mums, eucalyptus and purple flowers she said it looked like it grew there on the wall over black linen box Black Place painting and black charcoal aerial view of a river. On the table Metropolitan Steichen Masterprints 1895–1914. At the head of the bed on the floor folded up bear skin. On the...