Almost Dancing

In this kind of wind

blowing hard from the west-

sloughed off the Pacific

to dust the desert floor,

collecting all that chaff and grit

and whatever else a wind needs

to huff headlong into these mountains-

even the half-dead, loblolly pines

bow a bit from their stiff waists,

begin to dip and sway;

their boughs nodding together

like the heads of drunks

who have nowhere to go

between last call and their dark, bolted homes-

the last bars of a two-bit song

blowing from the jukebox-

almost touching because of the beat,

almost dancing . . .

I was the kid with two left feet

in a school where most of my classmates

majored in meanness

and the stupefying logarithms of sex.

I held up the wall at the senior prom

while the other kids grooved

and ground their groins

like interchangable parts

in some competent, well-lubed machine.

Even the chaperones shuffled their feet.

Even the sober, undrinkable punch

shimmered like a little sea.

The band played poorly on secondhand instruments

they'd eventually trade

for bus tickets out of town.

I would have left

if I had known where to go.

I would have danced if anyone had asked me.

How simple it looks out there

from in here: back and forth, to and fro.

Not the old-fashioned boxstep exactly,

but some facile choreography

starting low in the roots

and welling up through the trunk,

branches and twigs of every green

and once-green thing.

Likewise the beer cans dumped by the road

and the stop sign on its one metal leg

stir to the vagrant music of March-

the whole world a dancehall

for whatever moves with ease.

How simple it looks out there,

and yet-

what's here to move me to unlock the door,

unlock my bones some

and take the first step?

What's here to move me back

to the N.C.O. Club in Selma, Alabama-

nineteen-seventy-whatever-it-was-

where I sat with my parents

listening to the Ink Spots,

a band fallen to low-rent gigs

for homesick GI's

and blowzy town-girls no one would marry?

It was the first time we got family drunk

and when the game-legged guitarist

kicked the group into "Maybe,"

that graying, corpulent couple

who'd brought me up

breezed to the center of the empty floor

and fell into each other

like falling in love-

dancing so lightly I held my breath,

afraid they'd blow away.

I'd never seen them move like that-

so many moves I've missed.

So many steps I might have learned

by stepping with my wooden feet

into the fanfare of the world,

to let its music play me green.

Maybe the wind that whips these walls,

drums the glass

and whistles down the chimney pipe

could find me with its restless riffs-

take my breath away I mean-

and lead me from myself;

a lithe wind,

a measureless wind

alive with its grace notes of seed and decay,

leading nowhere

I could follow for long,

leading away...