Two Women Dancing

The way they mark this intricate beat in slow time,
not facing each other but side by side, angled,
hair swinging forward in doubled fluidity
as each glances just slightly over her left shoulder
and steps back, filling a small invisible box
on the floor, looks measured, Greek--I could imagine
them in robes, their long limbs firm lines beneath linen,
their hips directing the sway, each sandaled foot placed
delicately, deliberately in the pattern.

I feel the pulse too, but I’m frantic. The music
shoves me as if some god demanded a token
of complete abandon with every gesture.
Adrift, drowning, I flail--off time, lost, out of control,
my jittery eyes caught in amazement at how
they glide, slow as in strobe light but always moving
and synchronized, as when one arm mimes another
sweeping the air or both women dip from the waist
to reach down in one motion and lightly touch the floor.

This must be grace--learned and practiced, of course, but still
part of the body's deepest connection with time,
and time's with desire, as it builds and subsides
over and over in slow waves. They smile now, their eyes
half-closed. Bass, blips of rhythm guitar, snare taps--there
is so much they are floating on, with the shifting
poise of surfers. As they surrender to the god,
the fluent moves they make assert their mastery--
cool, shared, contained--over all his interwoven strands.

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