Page 26 - Savoring

Mary O’Connor
THE DANCING LIFE
At Mrs. Florence Mills Robinson’s Daybreak Classes, Chicago, 2005
The dry leaves are at it early these days rising and falling in crackly pliés
with the slightest breeze--when it gets windy they’ll do a fandango, put on a shindig.
The squirrels are at it, cha-cha, a hustle,
a pas de deux, tango, grassdance. They scuttle up tree trunks, sight, dart around, dodge,
doing their dance of nut espionage.
The scraps on the city streets join in
with all the junked-up energy of whim. Catch me if you can! A loop-the-loop
in a bid for freedom, the dance of escape.
Downtown before school assorted teens, lumpy or willowy, learn tap routines
in a cold fuggy studio, warming it.
Breath still steaming, they twist and strut
bend bonelessly to rise and make
a glorious clatter, with a single-buck break and a wing shuffle stomp, a lift of the chin, hoping not for a way out but in
to their very own magical innermost powers, uncramped by family fractures, turf wars piecemeal learning to be who they are
in the heart of the city on a wing and a prayer.
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