WHEN YOU’RE NOT LOOKING EVERYONE IS DANCING

In an early American silent movie,

There’s a paddlewheeler huffing down the Mississippi River.

There are black people and white people,

And when the white people are on-deck

They’re sight-seeing, the women whisperer under parasols,

The men tip their tall, beaver hats, looking as though

They’re always about to start a business deal.

A black man shines a pair of boots, a black woman

Runs clothes up and down

A tin washboard, a black man with a cane pole daps his bait.

But when the white people go off-screen

To wherever white people go

The black people right away start dancing.

A cake-walk, syncopated, with a pail of water

Balanced on their heads, and some sort of jig-for-two, dresses flaring.

A solo tap dance on a wooden crate, and all around them

The little shoeless kids

Clap to the rhythms of bone-clappers and a kazoo,

Swirl of river mist

Ghosting around the bodies.

It was beautiful, and ridiculous,

And racist, of course, but when

I came out of the theater onto the busy city street,

I shut my eyes tight.

I started walking. Immediately came that sound,

The quick advantage of feet. I could tell

What was going on. I’d seen

The movie. I knew that the Asians in the crowd

Were doing the dragon-dance, salsa for Latinos, Ghost-Dance,

Hip-hop, hora, tango, waltz.

Stuff was happening all around me.

I began to feel my white feet, white knees and hips

Adjusting to the beat,

Shifting and swaying to chit-chat and honk-honk,

Clothing whispers, boot thuds and stiletto clicks.

A cell-phone was playing “The Star-Spangled-Banner.”

I heard Bye, Mom. I love you

And This time be on time.

Way up ahead a man was singing

Hey brother, can you spare a dime?

I was so into it I forgot the trick,

The necessary artifice and stratagem.

I opened my eyes,

And sure enough the white people had come back

From wherever they went

And we were a moving crowd again, diverse

As any American city these days, and alone

With our thoughts, a very

Ordinary crowd but quite remarkable

When I began to pay attention,

And have paid attention since,

Trudge-dance, and high-heel-wobble

And gawky-as-a-turkey dance,

Briefcase-swing and mop-and-bucket dance and

Where’s-my-Daddy and

What’s-for-supper-honey dance.

If you were standing at your window looking down,

You might have said,

Hey, Mama, look,

Even the white people are dancing today .

REUNIONS

“I was fourteen at the time,” she said. It must have been summer

Because the light through the tall windows came at her

Like a swarm of bees. She wanted

To take off the lid of her skull, like a hat,

But it wouldn’t come loose.

“So I took off all my clothes in the big parlor.

Beethoven’s Ninth was on the radio – I didn’t even know

Such music existed.” The last movement, that ecstasy

The composer must have known was not in the service of God,

And because she couldn’t dance to it

Except in a kid’s goofy imitation of ballet,

Something like her spirit floated right out of her skin.

Light pushed her this way and that.

She felt like the ocean must feel in a storm. How that teenager

Must have felt when the big swan entered her

And brought her something like bliss

And something like a horror of a future just like this moment,

But going on and going on and on.

Some people can’t help it. We want some proof.

We come home to see the layers of the past,

Like the archeology of Jerusalem, open for everyone to see.

The trees cut down and the earth gauged out.

The bones dragged to the surface and polished,

Then the earth smoothed over.

Across the street, the corner market

Is now a bodega, and in front, two young mothers

Who used to speak one foreign language and now speak another

Murmur over their baby carriages

And where used to be shade

Is now a warming circle of sunlight.

“When I go back to visit, I’m always outside looking in,

Through one of those huge windows, but the light feels cooler.

I’m seeing this girl, so confused by being fourteen

She’s given up her body and become limitless,

And though I’m thinking she’s nuts, I envy her

Because I’m always older.”