Good Friday, Georgia O'Keefe

tumbleweed  mesas  cactus  etcetera

Georgia O'Keefe picked flowers for the greenhouse
      behind her scrimshaw face.

When she walked into the middle of the crucifixion no one noticed.
Eventually bystanders got bored and went home for lunch.

Stretched canvas.

Inspired but out of red paint,
Georgia squatted patient in the
crumbs of ten million champagne glasses
and looked up at this new kind of cactus.

Waiting for time to take its communion.
Waiting for bones.

from Gas Stations of the Cross
poems by Kathy Shaidle, 1990