Teach Me to Walk through the Quiet You Made

 

The dress wants to stay in—
or does it?—when its straps
and supports are as thin
as if made to vanish
into air, like a line
no one on stage,
or anywhere, should hear.

But even eyes, hushed
in dusk expectant
with new milky ways,
make silence sing—
and walk,
and even dance on high heels.

Even the neck and arms,
all the way from each
and every end,
are sheathed in the glove
of pending glow.

And the jazz—
the jazz of it all
is coming back
to play its wavy smoke,
this twining tune
from the time
when music was naughty
and sinuous still—
and one with flesh.