Train at Night in the Desert by Amie Sharp

Train at Night in the Desert by Georgia O’Keefe, 1916
 Train at Night in the Desert
      Georgia O’Keeffe, 1916 
By Amie Sharp
 
 Georgia, it’s been one hundred years 
 since you stood in the dark Texas dawn 
  
 and marveled at the multicolored haze 
 clouding toward you down the track. 
  
 You thought the rest of your life 
 would unspool from Canyon, Texas. 
  
 You wrote Alfred Stieglitz that you saw 
 the train, thought of him, and blazed. 
  
 You had never even been to New Mexico.
 I think of you, so young on the stark 
  
 gray sand, in the path of the oncoming,
 which looked that night like a train,
  
 glittering alive and black,       
 its light fixed upon you 
  
 like a sun, like an eye 
 seeing what no one else can see.

“Train at Night in the Desert: Georgia O’Keeffe, 1916” by Amie Sharp. Copyright © 2018. Originally appeared in Burningword Literary Journal and was reprinted in Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology.