This moment will not last. 
A blue circle sits on a tabletop 
of identical color, 
a flat horizontal bar 
like two others 
more intensely blue 
stacked beneath it, 
firm, level ground, 
we might think, 
for the world to rest upon. 
And those crossbeams, 
what do they rest upon, 
someone asks. 
This is not the Hindu tale 
of one elephant standing 
on top of another 
all the way down, 
for this last mesa 
balances on the round edge 
of one more circle. 
Already weight is shifting, 
pieces chipping off, 
the first downfall 
before Pedernal topples 
into the yellow fluff 
of cottonwood trees, 
leaving the sun 
to drop on crumbling horizons. 
But isn’t it beautiful, 
we must add, 
Piedra Lumbre, shining stone 
mountain, lake, and star, 
this instant of poise, 
the grace of line and curve 
on the eve of whatever comes after. 

Publisher’s Note:

*This watercolor may be viewed at Collections Online: The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe; link retrieved on 15 August 2024:
https://collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/1064/

(Also of interest, O’Keeffe’s oil on canvas Cottonwood and Pedernal (1948); link retrieved on 15 August 2024:
https://collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/1029/ )

Karl Plank

is the author of A Field, Part Arable (Lithic Press, 2017) and the critical work The Fact of the Cage: Reading and Redemption in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (Routledge, 2021). His poetry has appeared in publications such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Notre Dame Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and Zone 3, and has been featured on Poetry Daily. A past winner of the Thomas H. Carter Prize (Shenandoah) and a Best of the Net nominee, he is the J.W. Cannon Professor of Religious Studies, Emeritus, at Davidson College.

Author’s website: https://karlplankpoetry.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Thy Kingdom Come, poem by Karl Plank in St. Katherine Review (15 November 2023)

⚡ Imagine, flash fiction in Rappahannock Review (Issue 8.1, December 2020)

⚡ Interview with Karl Plank in Rappahannock Review (Issue 8.1); includes commentary about his flash “Imagine”

⚡ After Eden: Hopper’s Pennsylvania Coal Town, ekphrastic poem in Rappahannock Review (Issue 3.1, December 2015)

⚡ Interview with Karl Plank in Rappahannock Review (Issue 3.1); with commentary about his poem “After Eden”