One Thinks of Poetry and Means Ballet

 

“Your gallantly Romantic face

may be finer than the lotus flower.”

Wu Zhao (1799-1862), To the Tune

of “River’s Water”

 

Dance leaves the word of love

unsaid but even so fervently

chanted by the body whole

from head and heart to toe.

 

And furthermore, if a poem true

is what the ballerina conceived,

she’d paint a fair perfume too

in powdered pastel with her frame

 

or she may cast it as a running flow

made of silken, water-colored steps

to let her flutter through your soul,

 

becoming her pear’s petaled breath

or a lotus flower bared with her arms

that will change to a peach in bloom.