Dancing, by George Bowering

Dancing always made me sad,
the kind of sad you had when you were eight
and looked at the stuff left in a bucket
after the white chicken was chopped and plucked and
disembowelled. Your only support was that
you would never eat a bite of any chicken, never
put a fork into a fish, eat only flesh that was unlike
its former moving self. Meatballs were like breath,
a gift of the ground you yourself came into the air above
as if an onion, a leek, a boy should have had glasses,
he was always reading so. Any photos of that kid reading
show a most serious face, but if they could have caught him
dancing they’d have been impressed by his sadness. Hands
in the air might as well be a beaver on a slide, the air of April
might as well be arithmetic in another language, feet moving
without orders to be somewhere else will never, never
line up on the side of the turning world, turning slow enough
to keep its topsoil from sliding into orbit.

George Bowering is a veteran poet who also writes fiction and other prose. His new novel is a memoir titled Pinboy. In 2013 we'll see his newest poetry collection, titled Teeth.