Georgia O'Keefe's birthday

A poem, bones and the Maria Selby Garden orchids

Ram’s head White Hollyhock Hills 1935

I am on a plane flying from Sarasota Florida to New York, sending this courtesy of Delta miles. I never did this before, having internet on a plane, so it’s a bit unbelievable that it will work. Yesterday, at the Maria Selby Gardens, on Georgia O’Keefe’s birthday, Tony Shanahan and I performed a tribute to her as well as saluting the Garden’s fiftieth anniversary. The focus was on their vast orchid collection. There has been a drought in the Saratoga area so we were very happy to usher in three days of rain. In the course of the evening I read a little poem I wrote for her in 1970. I was inspired by a recent statement she had made, saying that she wasn’t painting very much, but was rooting out poisonous snakes in the desert surrounding her ranch.

These are her moving words, from “About Myself” written in 1939.

I have wanted to paint the desert and I haven’t known how.  I always think that I cannot stay with it long enough.  So I brought home the bleached bones as my symbol of the desert.  To me they are as beautiful as anything I know.  To me they are strangely more living than the animals walking around - hair, eyes and all their tails switching.   The hones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho’ it is vast and empty and untouchable – and knows no kindness with all its beauty.

Georgia O’Keeffe

great lady painter, what she do now?
she goes out with a stick
and kills snakes

georgia o’keeffe
all life still
cow skull
bull skull
no bull shit
pyrite pyrite
she’s no fool
started out pretty
pretty pretty girl

georgia o’keeffe
until she had her fill
painted desert
flower cactus
hawk and head mule
choral water color
red coral reef
been around forever

georgia o’keeffe
great lady painter
what she do now
go and beat the desert
stir dust bowl
go and beat the desert
snake skin skull
go and beat the desert
all life still

Bones on the window sill of her Ghost Ranch

Finally, a nod to the magnificent Selby Garden orchids, majestic and humble, growing on rocks, hanging from the air, and springing from lush tropical ground cover. It was a wonderful visit, and the 22nd birthday of Cairo was also noted. Now I am interested to see if I can send this to you from the clouds, with all my good wishes.

A mysterious glimpse.