Untaught

I have played with Okeffe’s

larger than life Flowers

Played with their eagerness

How they run off the page

Like they are super growing before me

Played with their vibrancy

How they command my full attention

Like the surprise of a double rainbow

Played with their abstraction

How they lure the dream mind

Into alternate realms of possibility

I have played with Okeffe’s

Larger than life with my art students

first grade hands

In the playing with their hands—

Eager, vibrant, dreamers

The Next generation of flowers

Unafraid of their reach beyond the page

Unafraid of their smallness in large

Unafraid of their unique possibilities

In the abstraction of

the larger than life play—

Okeefe’s hands, my hands and

the first graders hands—

Do we all carry memories now of

Making our smallness matter?

Oh how the students

teach more than the teacher

May the next generation of flowers

Never grow to know Okeefe’s fear**

**“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life-and l've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”

~Georgia O'Keeffe