For a Woman Who Looks Like Georgia O'Keefe

In my portrait I would have her sit just
as I first glimpsed her, sitting with one leg
drawn under her and the other foot outward,
her face in full profile as if she sees
across the valley the lost dinosaurs
rumbling back to Ghost Ranch after
their many millions of years under ash.
The morning seems made for them,
as they must have experienced it, not
for us, latecomers come to escape
hells men have made, not asteroids
or volcanoes, floods, or hurricanes
of these days when all catastrophes
are said to be of Biblical proportions,
hence only to be suffered. I yield
to the do-nothings. I gaze upon beauty.

I would ask that she lift her left hand,
touching her braid, then reach for me
with the other so that I might be allowed
to lift her to her feet and lead her toward
the canyon, high up the path where we
might sit and look down upon the world
Georgia painted, the cow and horse skulls,
the fossilized bones of the dinosaurs,
the sun-seasoned wood weathered like her
leather face, the sky as blue as Ming cobalt.

On the cliff face behind her I observe the top
layer of stone as if the first ash from an eruption
that took off a mountain top is just now
beginning to fall, a snow laying down white
upon ochre, enough to blanket every living
creature and all the dead in their keeping,
as if nature whether gentle or aroused
to fire works only for the birthing of beauty.

copyright 2006 David Ray
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