Sunday Stories: Remembering Blue

Where you read what you read affects how you read what you read. On reading Georgia O'Keeffe (and other mystics) in Abiquiu.

• Weekends with O’Keeffe by C. S. Merrill

• O’Keefe: Days In A Life by C. S. Merrill

• Saint John of the Cross: Luminous Darkness by Mirabai Starr

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Post-monsoon gloaming at the Abiquiu Inn

After the monsoon rains subsided, in the gloaming—courtyard of the Abiquiu Inn, Abiquiu, New Mexico, Aug. 2,2022. Photo by the author.

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I can say about how I felt today

Washing Georgia O’Keeffe’s white stockings

In the basin…

I can talk about hatred between

Her friends and employees

I can talk of history

Of the Taos art scene

Of New York in the 1920s

I can talk about her clothes

Ranging like Mandarins

Conspiring in the closet.

I can talk a lot.

But I cannot speak of

Cloud shadows slowing crossing cliffs

Or the look on her face when

She turns her unseeing eye to sky

And remembers blue.

—From Weekends with O’Keeffe by C. S. Merrill

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Moonrise Kingdom, Electric Horizon

Crescent moon rising over an electrical storm on the western horizon from Christ in the Desert Monastery, Abiquiu, New Mexico, Aug. 3, 2022. Photo by the author.

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P.S. Happy Birthday, Kelley!

Kelley Weber (L) and the author (R) at the Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico, July 30, 2022.

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