Each night,
dancers cluster and un-cluster,
all swinging roses. Their shoes
sanding the floor as the moon
scars it. Shadows flash
where corners meet in blue points.
The men are young
and so are the women
and they are like each other
in their languid, guarded
movements, the way their bodies
are sometimes hunched, sometimes
elongated and taut and secret,
but fluid at every joint, and new.
Bodies like deer in snow,
snow the color of powder
and skin, their skin,
white as sky.
Music breathes
warm, fumbling over a wrist, an eye,
a loop of hair. Dancers spin in traceries
dipping and retreating in circles,
a flair of bloom, a recoil into bud,
slipping limbs between limbs,
hands against silk against skin.
Gleaming fabric in folds
and seams, smooths on ribs, flows down
to hip and thigh, leg and shoe.
Then,
pouring like honey across a fine line,
the music spills, out of shape
and twists through the crowd
like a restless dog, dishevels a dress,
fogs the spectacles, hovers
as dancers brush and roughen off center,
hands releasing as they spin out
through doors, even windows,
through the cold night, bodies glowing
as they burn into the snow.
Click here to read Barbara Blatt on the origin of the poem.
Image by Hulki Okan Tabak on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
