Four Poems in Conversation with Georgia O’Keeffe’s Image of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit

Photo by Jet Kim on Unsplash

As it says on the tin.

Green ripples in flight, flickering

Tricking the center, plunging

Inwards

Receptive

Deeper in light and dark, shades that thrust

A hidden canvas of burgundy and white

A flower

Photo by Natalie Breeze on Unsplash

Clear skies reject

A drawing in, a dark heart

The light, reborn

— — — — — — -

The flow

Reaching petals

Stretching upwards, the light

Embracing the within, fallen

And gone

Photo by Romain Le Teuff on Unsplash

Light embraces darkness

Centered in on all that is and needs to be

On that one thing which brings life

Is it life?

Or is it death it brings, the sword coming down

Or is it both, because one cannot be had without the other?

It is both

It is that place where one must die so another can live

It is that forgotten place where all things go to be reborn

It is the mother’s story in its stark basics

It is, quite simply, birth