Looking

I recall an August afternoon in 1973
when I took my daughter, then seven,
to see what Georgia O’Keeffe had done with where she had been.
One of the vast O’Keeffe “Sky Above Clouds” canvases
floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day,
dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light,
    and my daughter looked at it once,
        ran to the landing, and kept on looking.

“Who drew it,” she whispered after a while.
        I told her.
                “I need to talk to her,” she said finally.
       
                                            Joan Didion, The White Album