The Dance

Around me
there are light and heat
and many people laughing
people talking, talking, talking…
floods of words unloosed,
flowing
endlessly
not caring what they say
or mean…

There is music of a kind;
and there are many, many games
to play within the pale,
in these gardens wide and formal,
paved and shaved and shaped…

Players moving
through the grounds
in gluts and clusters gathered
’round a single thought
or need or impulse
holding hands aloft
in stately dances,
holy and mundane…
Deciding moral issues
who is crazy, who is sane,
and what the Market bears today
and who can dance and who may play
and what is Art and
whether we can ever say
what is real enough to matter
in the Universal Scheme of Things…

Tears and laughter drift
above the heavy groan of angst,
above the pulse and throb of love,
romantic and profane…

…flavors, textures, touches
to inflame the senses
and dis-integrate the soul
into a million flickering portions,
each one compelled and clinging
to a feeling of the truth
that once it knew…

Where is my place,
my partner for the dance?
What secrets should I whisper,
cast upon the winds of chance?
And what hold close,
and what expose
of  my darkened inner chambers,
of what my mystic knowing knows,
of my own opinions, taste, and style…?

Or shall I stand alone
apart, without,
 within the haven safe
of solitude 
observing, only,
and sadly smile as if
superior.



1983, revised 2019