Georgia O’Keeffe Looks Over Her Shoulder Just when she thinks she’s painted all her fear, When bleached skulls turn to poppies red as lust, The sound of something wild attracts her ear.
Anne Higgins, a member of the Daughters of Charity, teaches English at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg Maryland. She has had about 100 poems published, in Commonweal, Spirituality and Health, The Melic Review, The Umbrella Journal, The Centrifugal Eye and a variety of small magazines. Garrison Keillor read her poems “Open-Hearted” and “Cherry Tomatoes” on “The Writer’sAlmanac.” Five full-length books and two chapbooks of her poetry have been published, most recently, Reconnaissance, in 2014.
My Father, at 92 At two o’clock today he declared “Well, it’s time to go.” Where?” I asked Where?” my blind and deaf mother asked. “Home.” ”But you are home,” we said. “You’ve been living here eight years,” I said, “since you were eighty-four.” My father, now unsteady on your feet, you don’t remember your location, your wallet, your keys, but you do remember when I ran out in front of oncoming traffic one day, after kindergarten. You were on the other side of the street. You said it was because I was already nearsighted and no one knew it yet. I recall it was because I didn’t notice the oncoming traffic — All I saw was you, YOU, I saw clearly, and still do, standing on the other side of the street, waiting for me.
Black jacket, white soft collar curving near the place where desert sunset turns to rust awakens in that neck a prickling fear. The haunches of dead lovers gleam as clear in skulls as in the orchid’s velvet crust. Dry rattling of bone curls back her ear. Her upswept silken hair declares the year in shades of gray and tortoise brown as dust just when she thought she’d painted all her fear. Her thin pink pearl of seashell curves to hear the desert’s voice, more fierce, more dry than just as three fine wrinkles flow down from her ear. Such gaunt grace turns her, luscious and severe, containing bones and orchids, fruit and crust! Just when she thinks she’s painted all her fear, the sound of something wild attracts her ear. Jigsaw Begin the puzzle; there is no escape. Restore the upturned ruins of the night; They do not match by color but by shape. The pieces grow in number, shrink in size. The shadows pull us closer to the light. Begin the puzzle. There is no escape. The broken sky compels us to awake; the scattered shreds of mountains dim our sight; They do not match by color but by shape. Remark the texture of the curves and planes. Stand back and focus mystery’s delight; Begin the puzzle; there is no escape. The New Year dawns upon the ritual; We put the sky together, fitted tight; It does not match by color, but by shape. We feel and test; we fail and find. We rise. Return the picture to component shards: Begin the puzzle. There is no escape. It does not match by color, but by shape.
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