the dancers, they say

AUTHOR'S PRAYER 

If I speak for the dead, I must
leave this animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over
for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.

If I speak of them, I must walk
on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through the rooms without
touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking
"What year is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,

I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition and the darkest days
must I praise.

Ilya Kaminsky

photography by piotr kowalik


~|~ ~|~ ~|~ ~|~

i can trace no steps back to where I was before,
before age, before experience, before years were marked
by the steps i've taken

i could waltz once, with clumsy grace, and 
foxtrot to the sound of rhythms
older than the steps we traced

to dance within form and society is a skill

to dance with the exultation of  a child
is a gift that fades as quickly
as the sound of footsteps
down an empty hallway

~mine 2007/07

edge of something

The photographer is Bob Gates.

Oceans

I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing. 
        And nothing happens!
Nothing...Silence...Waves... 

      --Nothing happens? 
Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

~Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881 - 1958)

~|~ ~|~ ~|~

there is little to say about restless waves, 
or restless feet, that can be stilled and soothed 
by the feel of water lapping over one's toes

at ocean's edge all the fever and tension of life and living leeches out, 
like salt into the sand, 
and there is nothing so calming as being at the edge of the sea 
where nothing is ever, 
ever still or silent

i would be the sea
if only
it would not be 
forever

endless

for it must be lonely
to be immortal

~mine 2007/07