Invention and Necessity

You, the first time we danced the mambo,

you, in a new faux faded pale pink print, bought

for the occasion from a store the caters

to poor hip grad students like us, were

incandescent beyond any filiment

or tungsten that Edison could dream

of. What should we speak about the coming

and goings of delicate spins and steps.

The internal metronome of beats

shape loves movement. I learn more

about the proper execution of steps. Our hips,

back and forth through the darken room,

kept beat to the one, two, three four, one...

Others around us, more accomplished,

but not us, move with one eye toward

the audience. But I, I look at our feet,

at the moves recently learned, sweeping

hands meeting, of shoes lifting

form the centripetal forces that turned

us about and centered our pivot point.

Then cumbia played and we raced

at fast as heated hearts on a treadmill.

The water on the table for the serious

dancers. The pity we felt for the others

on the make. Suddenly, and for first time

even after a hundred an fifty-three

years of reading them, I understood the love

poems of Neruda. Seven years later

our son was born of that night.