Upon Seeing Themselves in the Floral Paintings of O'Keeffe    

Women's eyes flash like neon
absorbing O'Keeffe's oceanic flowers
which hang like billboards across skies,
or marquees on mountain tops.

Paint on her fiery canvasses drips,
turns into waterfalls of poppy reds and black iris blues
splashing down to form a pool.

Drawn to these mountain tops
women dive from rocky crevices into the Pool
of a Hundred Colors.  As colors ooze into skin,
they feel a sudden ease
float on backs with a new buoyancy.

They swim and glide,
arms arc like herons' necks,
or roll over like dolphins at play.
Gone the tension from hips and legs
or from that cave of deepest sighs.
Legs flutter like fishtail fans. Faces flushed,
dip and rise in wet radiance.

Heat floods the swimmers.
They shed jeans. dresses, bras.
Breasts, colors of salt, coal, copper, clay, creamy quartz
nipples ringed with Egyptian blue,
they sing of swelling labia.
Legs open, silken waters enter
and soothe, their bodies turn eloquent.                                                                                    
Swimming in the Pool of A Hundred Colors
they see their caves fill with the wild
throb of color; blatant flame of poppies,
magenta tinged lust of black lilies  
orange orgasm with red in tropical cannas.