*

I watched ballroom dancing that evening.
I often did. I counted the beat
of the tango, focused on the woman dancer.
I watched the sharp
click of her heels stab the floor.
She wore a dress made from stars.
I do not remember her partner.
This was my first lesson in love.
Tomorrow I would learn how to skip and fall
without crying.
There was fire in those clicks.

*

I don’t want it to be any dance,
to any music. It was 1980
and I don’t want it to be
Billy Joel or Queen.
I want them to have started their waltz
on the lawn and I want it to be You and You
from Die Fledermaus, and I want them
to be lost to the sound
of their passion, lost to the creaking crickets,
lost to each other, and they don’t notice
their misstep into the cement,
nor do they take notice of the second or third
or others that followed, because they are taken
by the dips of the music, the yawn of the violins,
the sighs of the bass. It is easy to forgive
such fervor.

*

The day after, I jump from imprint to imprint.
It is like a dance mat. I follow the steps.
The imprints are deep. They swallow my feet.
There are lessons here. I am learning the first one.

…and you’ve got to be the meadow to understand dusk,
and the growing grass to know yearning, and the heart to know waning light.

You’ve got to be the immigrant’s son to understand tobacco fingers,
lying to women of other shades, and the versatility of rice.

You’ve got to be the emptiness between stars to know how deep
the cracks in the sidewalks are, and a Midwesterner to know the taste of soil

and the August heat that scorches the rubber off shoes and that the space
between stars is less mysterious than a pasture.

You’ve got to be a dog to understand the beauty of the bunny’s
zig-zag trail through the snowy yard, the joy of the sound

of rattling keys within a lock, and the exquisite relief of scratching off a tick.
You’ve got to be born a turtle to understand time.

You’ve got to travel to another country to understand
when words have no meaning and the waters are threatening and

the only bridge is carried by a fluttering multicolored insect.
You’ve got to watch the gecko scurry across Buddha’s hand

and the moss growing on his nose,
and you’ve got to laugh, you’ve got to let the world know

you are trying to wake the unwakeable.
You’ve got to die happily, just once, to remember all your lives.
 

In my dream I lick the salt on the stone
I find underfoot. It tastes like the burnt
floating flecks of the leaves and weeds we lit
on fire the summer the coyotes were restless
and the fireflies made constellations in the field.

In my dream the stone is cracked down
the center and I know to peer into it is to see
a dream of me looking into a stone
I find underfoot, is to taste the summer of coyotes
and fireflies.

Why is it in this dream I am twenty-two?

And why is the air heavy with need?

The stone is light like paper,
but I sense in it a heavy secret
and it has to do with fireflies
and coyotes in the summer
and fire and flecks.

And language, too, to shape all of this.

In my dream I feel myself being called back
to that stone, into that crack, called back
to the cusp of understanding, that first moment
when the brain begins to pulse.

In my dream I say nothing,
but think my throat can be like
the hummingbird, that it can take mouthfuls of nectar
from the purple fuchsia hanging off our porch that summer
and still vibrate with song as it buzzes
away.

The song is about the word green in another language.

1.

What was it he said: The dark wheat listens?
To what? The time that begins to dry the stalks
and drop the apples from bruising heights?

The cranes that land and take flight
in a cornfield, their bodies
like arrows pointing somewhere?

To the darkening sky, perhaps, and the reddening
moon, to the heat that sizzles even at
night and the cicadas that sing the end of summer?

The crows have gathered. Their black wings are spread
over something we do not see.

2.

The short woman hums
a song from the morning dream
she forgot she dreamt.

The tune is familiar. It is solemn like the first drops of rain
on a dirt road.

3.

Please, look above you.
Up there. Be still.
That leaf is singing its goodbye.

4.