__________________________________
Practice
By JamesGalvin
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment