by your fingers dancing
over soft minor keysvisions fill me up
pushing aside the day's lists and misspoken gestures
until I find clarity quiet sad
all I can see clearly is dance
I feel fluid rushing grace
even as I realize I could not approximate with my body
the dance which fills my mind
whenever I listen to your songs
dancing makes my mind wander
to your great affair
the letters never sent the stories
things you both might have said
Did she jump or was she thrown?
Was it her skill as a trapeze artist that saved her life?
Was she in the dance these songs orchestrate?
the most cherished beloved
unreachable absorbed flying falling
underwater or under
a thousand tears she never heard roll down
you sat off to the side
at a corner table perhaps
composing letters lives songs
there is nothing so beautiful
born of such a mix of treasures and sorrow
as these slow reveries these pieces
fitting me together
making me turn on the light again
i am cradled by strange melodies
soothing yet driving me forward
moving my body into grace without my consent
dropping my heart and lifting my stomach
scattering my thoughts and carrying me
smiling from my belly into the arms of sleep
and I come with arms full of music
instead of holding back or
holding onto yesterday's lists
i hold onto this dream and dance in your arms
still you wake me in the night
to rise from bed and write your love letters
the ones that play more softly in my mind
as I hear your fingers dancing over keys
the way you would caress her skin shimmering
like a fine web at her wrists and temples showing
like maps of places she's barely seen
you watched the silvery skein of light
falling on her hair
that rich buttery brown cascade
that sways like dancing down stairs
in the gold light of the hallway
i saw her come into the cafe
her satin coat fairly wrung with rain
she melted into the chair
as though it were your embrace
or something she might digest
through each curve and pore
becoming a great marriage of furniture and body
the steam rising from strong tea
playing games curling like vine tendrils
mixing with her fragrant warmth
she was your rich earth dark and inviting
the inimitable place of full rest
and in the same the threat of being
washed under with the tide
the sea was in the rustle of her dress
and the rolling comfort of her hips as she danced
waves crashing in the rippling smoothness
of her back as she stretched
always she seemed to move off away
as you sat in the corner watching her
composing countless letters to court her
a force of the earth
and when she fell from the window
was it not your heart and stomach in twin convulsions
that leapt to secure your place on the ground
beside her for one last dance?© e.e.stanley 2000
