for Georgia O'Keeffe's The Black Place

​Artist: Georgia O'Keeffe
b. November 15, 1887 Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; d. March 6, 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico City.
Title:  The Black Place
Date: 1944
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With this stone, I am no melancholy woman:    

not relentless
in consideration of death
in the  gray morning
                                                                                     
or groaning at the sunlight
 slipping between the rock.
                                                                                     
Instead,
I am a voice     emerging
 
from the borders of winter;
a victor          in the parting of the red sea
 
  a root thrived 
 in the smallest part of earth
 
whispering:       here I am       here I am       here I am
             
                                                                              free
   

                       for Salvador Dalí's Persistence of Memory

​Artist:  Salvador Dali
b. May 11, 1904, Figueres, Spain; d. January 23, 1989, Figueres, Spain 
Title:  Persistence of Memory
Date: 1931
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​

 
Time    slaughters     decades
seasons of inertia    bending              faces   packed   with numbers
flexible    efforts   wait   stop     ask:    where are you going now?
we are getting there       in the essence of memory
madness   seashells   time      on the beach
            time at the window        waiting
time undressing     violent time      time to go      time to rethink
            decisions bare       tree branches              time to climb     
scrap knees
time to fill     throat with ants        choke           slip into daydream
paint       you      dwindling in the corners of the canvas
stirring romance       time black     unrepentant       sacrificed

disappearing