after Georgia O’Keeffe, 1958

                     Soaked in the information of stillness,

I found the moon too chaste—cut at the source
of its language.

                                                   Night, green with blue:
ready for the ladder’s fame
before mountains turned                into an idée fixe.

Months into my sea
               psyche, I still wake up

               with this land

in my head—cornered somewhere, missing a wall
                                                         or some edge,

a ladder shows up         lighter than its own breath.