Gary Margolis: It Pleases Me

interview with Georgia O’Keeffe
at 90, 1977

to paint the bones
inside the sky
to bring them home

to light my
brush here on
Lake George

the desert
inside my
mind there’s

american in
everything
for those men

who haven’t
crossed this
Hudson River

line I paint
a flag’s red stripe
blue of a bluer

sky a cow’s white
skull I don’t think of
death I love

the shapes dried flowers
make it pleases me

to say

—

copyright 2015 Gary Margolis

Georgia O’Keeffe, Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue, 1931, image courtesy of The Met

Ram’s Head with Hollyhock, 1935