Showtime 2010
For a blessed blur of magically elapsing hours,
This past, too-fast-passing Sunday afternoon,
You and I sat in Washington University's Edison Theatre,
Watching choreographed dancers prancing,
In an ebullient profusion of extravagant maneuvers and acts,
Across a dazzling red-green-white-and-blue-lit stage —
A panoply ranging from three-year-olds to retirees.
And what a spectacle of passionate expression it was,
So festive and celebratory, so physically exhilarating.
Oh, those flying, sliding, leaping, spiraling bodies,
Those feet stepping in tight-knit and loose-limbed stitches,
Weaving their rhapsodic tapestry of athletic activity,
That illusion of effortlessness in the pursuit of delicate freedom,
Release from earthly concerns, worries, hurries.
Then, the stage went black, for the final time,
As the last dancers faded into emptiness's protracted scrim,
Until all we were left with were disparate afterimages
So totally mixed up as to taunt our dizzy spirits,
Leave us craving, longing and yearning for yet more —
That intoxicating, mesmerizing sensation of fluid movement,
To sway us into an endless future, buoyed by beauty.
06/15/10
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