by: Stephen Mead
Stephen Mead’s poem uses a Georgia O’Keefe painting as the occasion for full blown meditation on how landscape can reveal the transcendent around and in us, a “place” where we find that “…at the center, is an embrace.”
From The Far Away Nearby
(for Georgia)
Somehow distanced,
Rooted to breeze, the impartial
Sky, these stretches of flung life —
For years I have reached toward
This exact place in time, a setting
Without windows: open, opening…
Above, hawks swoop.
The desert collects driftwood.
Here, at the center, is an embrace:
Hard but solvent, an essence, fossil-white,
Ladled & poured…
The canvas depicts a cow’s skull,
One branch fetched from the far away
Nearby, evocative, antler-elegant.
The cactus blossoms, some space
Filled beautifully by holding living
Close
Yet
At arm’s length…
This calla is a landscape.
Bells bong, shiver flesh
From the hills of New Mexico.
I had to come here in order to be. ((Stephen Mead’s poem is inspired by Georgia O’ Keefe’s From the Faraway Nearby, oil on canvas, 1938.))
A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. If you are at all interested and get the time, Google Stephen Mead and the genres of either writing, art, or both, for links to his multi-media work.
