Remembering Georgia O’Keeffe
Author: Bill Roberts
The flirtatious girls I always wanted to meet
in high school and later in college
I’m surrounded by now I’ve retired
and joined AARP, go on those
bus rides to museums, the zoo,
the butterfly pavilion, tours of Christmas
lights at night, walking tours easy enough
for those of us with arthritis or worse,
the Capitol Building, the Mint,
several fading restaurants not too proud
to accommodate a hungry bus load
of wheezing seniors, all seeking warm,
soft, bland, digestible, cheap vittles,
me often in the midst of loud women
fresh from their hairdresser, nails
sharp, painted a blood color, all of them
over-dressed for wherever we’re going,
heavily made-up, Tammy-Faye lidded,
clothes a bit too tight, generously
proportioned, interested in my every
word, happy I’m back from trips east,
west or south – none of us venture
north any more – and just as pleased
as schoolgirls that my latest health report
is positive, no additional horse pills prescribed
to east the burden of daily strife with
bad knees, weak eyes, runny nose,
gas pains, swollen abdomen, proteiny
breath, sore gums from ill-fitting dentures,
irregularity or over-regularity, the blues,
things these ladies say they find charming, and
I would have lusted for them had they been
so attentive and coquettish in our youth.
(Published in the Winter 2001 issue of Rattle: Poetry for the @1st Century)
Note: This poem is the result of a visit to Balboa Park in San Diego in the year 2000. My wife and I toured a photo exhibit of Edward Steiglitz’s early portrayal of his beloved Georgia O’Keeffe, ages 25 to 35 perhaps, all sepia-toned with the subject totally nude. A lovely woman, even into old age. And her paintings I cherish. The exhibit got me to thinking of all the lovely girls I lusted for in high school and then college but never was lucky enough to lure into the back seat of my ratty old car. And so it goes…
