Taos
From the Faraway, Nearby, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1938
by Jillena Rose
Bones are easier to find than flowers
in the desert, so I paint these:
Fine white skulls of cows and horses.When I lie flat under the stars
in the back of the car, coyotes howling
in the scrub pines, easy to feel how those bones
are so much like mine: Here is my pelvis,
like the pelvis I found today
bleached by the sun and the sand. Same
hole where the hip would go, samewhite curve of bone beneath my flesh
same cradle of life, silent and still in me.
About the Author:
Jillena Rose is an American poet who lives in Michigan.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Jillena Rose. Poem reprinted from Third Wednesday, Volume 3, Issue 1, Winter 2011, by permission of Jillena Rose and the publisher.
