As Yet Untitled
We spend all our lives
making monsters of ourselves:
the tender feet
hard-trained until they arch like dolphins’ backs,
their bones like bridges spanned
by calloused skin.
The knees’ inverted arc
sails bony ankles heavenward;
the thighs like steely hawsers
cast the whole ship off,
cast it heavenward–
the collarbones like ploughshares
carve the air.
Hard to explain this,
though G-d knows I’ve tried.
What makes us do
all that the unseen god requires of us?
The music speaks
and stirs the weary dead:
go wake the living in their stalls!
The royal box looms empty
lonesome in the night.
Lone and strong we leap
now miracles, now golems,
in the light.
–14 August, 2017
Posted on 2017/08/14, in balllet, poetry, Writing and tagged ballet, poetry. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
danseur ignoble 
Bodies can tell stories. I once had a teacher who read a person’s body just like a book. He’d say things like: Something is wrong with you, I can see it in your neck/shoulders/backbone. And we’d tell him about our troubles with our parents, about bad marks, about crushes we had etc. etc. Your poetry is bringing back memories. Thank you.
Thank you!
It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s so true—our histories are written in our bodies, and we carry them around with us, wearing them. Your teacher just have been very insightful!
So much of the time, when I write poetry, I think I’m just sort of writing down the pictures from my head, and then when people read it they notice things and I find myself saying, “Oh! That *is* there! Wild!”