The Dance

Dancing, I am reaching

To fit myself to it. To match my movements

To its moments, this time to that time,

(though not every poem ought to rhyme)

And body - in attendance, attentive, bound -

Vacillates in nervous haste and boundless space,

Too free. Body throbs,

Sweats, sits to one side. I watch.

I am not moving through the world but

The world is moving violently, ecstatically, invisibly

Through me, and all of the poems

I will never write

Birth and gorge and sizzle and die

Behind the curtains of my eyes.

And so I sit to one side,

Aflame with tiny lives - their cords uncut.

I am ripe with death.

I watch the stage: Bodies dance and reach.

Their sprawling-falling vindicates;

Their careless grace intimidates! A silvered mass

About its task: Bodies dance and reach.

Body - still attentive, still bound -

Now rises, vacillating, to begin

To dance, and dancing I am reaching

Not to fit but to forget. Reaching to release

What I will never write,

To give my body to the sky

Before it hits the ground.