—Georgia O’Keeffe, with Alfred Stieglitz [second meeting]

 

Two-thousand miles from Texas,

this is less an island than Brooklyn

 

dipping a prim toe into the grime

of Gravesend Bay. It is Decoration Day:

 

bunting and ticker tape, black-suited

bathers creaking the boardwalk.

 

Inland, we stroll the midway, where

grease rides the air as ochre foam

 

crusts the water. There is the tune

and hitch of player-pianos, penny

 

arcades; barkers touting the ring-toss,

the high-striker. “Two wallops

 

for a nickel, five for a dime. Win a Kewpie

doll for your cutie pie, an armadillo

 

basket for her arm.” Alfred offers

his arm instead. My fingers notch

 

in his elbow. The sky turns

cobalt threaded with ivory. Sun full

 

on my face. With the heat, something

surfaces. We walk; I listen; I talk

 

when seems called for, but all the while it

rests in my chest: not love, exactly—not

 

yet—but wanting, purely felt. He touches

my shoulder, steers me to the moment

 

the diving coaster car meets its shadow,

and my ribs compress around breath,

 

forming—What? I am back in Palo Duro,

a canvas collecting sack near to tearing

 

with chalcedony eggs whose outer plainness

belied inner holdings—manganese, copper,

 

chromium, quartz. The secret to geodes,

though, is to break them. Otherwise: fused

 

crucible, hollow repository. I watch

his mouth but do not hear what he’s saying.