The world arrived so carefully packed in time, in time to open, it could have been God's parachute. We booby-trapped it. God, you will remember from the Old Testament, was a terrorist. Now He's a generalization. We've taken to scaring ourselves. We scare the ozone layer. But today, still spinning around the world's axis, which is imaginary, I was permitted to walk home again through writhing spring. Leafy things and flowers in earnest everywhere, ignoring fear. If it was anything it was a garden. Then, by the gymnasium I saw a girl in a green leotard with long sleeves. She wasn't just any girl, she was a dancer, which is to say only she didn't regret her body. She moved in it and it moved. She spun herself around. She wasn't dancing, exactly, more like she was practicing a dance, getting the moves right, which moved me even more. Sure I wanted her, but I stood quietly as she practiced dancing alone, without music, and then I continued on. It wouldn't have been a good thing to interrupt that solitude, identical with her body, or risk frightening her with speech. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...VARIATIONS: 11 by CONRAD AIKEN PORTRAIT OF A BABY by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET TRANSLUCENT FINGERS by MALCOLM COWLEY AND THE GREATEST OF THESE IS WAR by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ON TAGORE by MARIANNE MOORE |