Pliés

Walking through the pink light
foothills drain into the evening,
watching old rye swing
its silver tips across 
the jazzy green experiments,
I feel summer coming
with the same exuberance
as a child who’s pulled apart
her braids in the low pasture, 
wanting to sway the way 
a willow does, well 
beyond herself. 

Hair as hair moving, 
a leg a thing distinct
I held loose lead upon, 
I danced in the meadow 
with the newborn lambs
unobserved, responding
to myths I had never heard,
fables I had not yet written,
all afternoon.  One time
I danced in the meadow for 
no other reason -- one time.

I discount the midnight peyote 
kicks to the desert moon
when I was not myself
but a gazelle, or that once
swimming in the Gulf 
in love illicitly when I needed 
to say in water ballet 
I was caught between worlds
like marlin full of color
I could not hold.  Nor that
recital display of my feminine charm, 
daring to dance solo for a stag
I surprised on a mountain trail
in drizzling rain. He stopped,
seven points, to stare, watch
my legs, watch my hair.

There is only the once
I danced for reach, unseen
in the wild, though I did come close
in the disco parlors of Madrid 
where no one cared I danced alone 
each night while the black light fractured 
my own watching to the bits
of self I had to salvage.  

The light is yellowing.  I hear an unfamiliar 
birdsong somewhere near the pond.  
I watch the slant of sunshine 
soak into the soil beneath 
the tails of rye and fold with it 
from the knee, hips tucked 
and arms thrown wide 
to take my role 
			in another summer coming.

			©Anne Prowell1995