Dance With Me
The mountain is whispering,
“Come and dance.”
Her voice speaks of crystal air, and
Sheer walls of rock, tipped in snow.
As if crooking a finger,
She beckons with the
Wide-open arms of her horizons.
She invites a flinging of arms,
Spinning, an untethering.
“Come. Stretch out your soul. Dance.”
Or else
She whispers a dance of stillness,
“Raise your arms, child,” she says.
“Allow the umbilical cord of your body
To connect heaven with earth,
Clouds with dirt.”
I used to be a dancing girl.
Sneakers, stilettos, sensible flats
Replaced the dancing shoes
Hanging on the wall of memory.
But the mountain calls me to dance again.
No more shimmying up to the idea of the dance,
Eyes averted, as if asking not to be seen.
No more tap dancing around the fact that
This girl-woman still wants to dance.
No more painful dancing in pointe shoes,
Molding the dance into perfection.
This is modern dance, Baby!
Free-form twists and glides and swoops,
Listening to my body
And moving in ways that liberate.
And when I finish my dance with Mama Mountain,
There will be no applause, no curtain call,
No bouquet of flowers.
The stones, grass, sky, birds, blooms
Are audience enough.
There is no need for this dancing woman
To hang up her shoes again.
The dance of my life will continue—
On the hills, on the plains, on the rivers and oceans.
But first, the mountain.
She is whispering.