Rose, Pink

“Nobody sees a flower really;
      it is so small.
We haven’t time,
      and to see takes time.”
The words and the sentiment belong to Georgia O’Keefe, the artist.
She spent a large part of her career learning to see,
      and then helping the rest of us see.
She used her paintings to depict the grand,
      which she often found in the very small—
            a petunia, an iris, a close-up of a rose.
The spirit of Georgia O’Keefe lives in this photograph.
The coloring doesn’t vary a great deal, but it doesn’t need to.
The hues that are spread before us are plenty.
The shapes are random, yet they’re cohesive.
The way they hold together is quite perfect.
This is a rose, and yet from this perspective, it is somehow more than a rose.
Its small self points toward something grand.
Georgia O’Keefe was right: it takes time to see in this way.
Dare we steal time from our other pursuits to attempt such seeing?
Dare we not?