Fire rising in my cheeks
Fanned by insignificance
The work I do is never known
Since I'm not on stage to dance.

Russian Duchess of Glory,
Chilling precision behind every turn,
And here I am cracking a joke because I can't even waltz.

Anna Pavlova,
Can you see yourself in the full scope of your beauty tonight?

Can we both stand to be witty,
Or find it easy to live past thirty?

Why is it always more elegant in the moonlight,
Regardless of the action,
From East Europe to the sad blue East Kentucky...

Have you once looked me in the eyes to judge how honest I've been in reading your history...

Oh, Anna Pavlova,
If you only knew that beauty would hold weight in modern reincarnation.
///
Still I wait for your autograph.

You who I dare to look upon through seldom borrowed books.

And if you pay regard at all,
To any of this, that is,

Then how much will you take hold of,

How long can you maintain your balance...

And are your pirouettes more acts of orbit

Or simply spinning out and away from me?

Darkness swirls in blackened night
That might have left me without light
Yet with me are fireflies
That gift sight for my eyes

Like a waltz they sway my lovely vision enhancers
Not to mention they are amazing dancers

He was a masterpiece,
A dancer.

His movements created mists around me,
Enveloping me in a canvas of euphory.
I didn't need a ring upon my finger
For he gave me a veil with his dance.

He danced across broken ridges,
Jumped across broken bridges,
Lived asleep in his dreams
And dreamt awake of his life.

He was a masterpiece,
A dancer.

He didn't have legs,
But he didn't need them.

For he gave me everything with his dance.

Blur of Gold

Let the world blur
On the tips of her toes
She will spin and spin 
Till the darkness grows

Hands raised above her head
Shoulders disappear behind her hair
The loud music will mask
Her erratic gasps of air

Dispersed in opposite directions
Every rhythm is so new
In her temporary blindness
Every light is blue

A delirium airing live
Adrenaline looking down a cliff
The only voice is nothingness
Every muscle learns to forgive

Just like a gold coin
Tossed down suddenly
Intruding eyes are hypnotized
A blur of gold is all they see

As if just to teach a lesson
To put the black next to the white
Irises flicker with sullenness
Then dies a vivid light

Meters of cloth
Wasted on the sparkly ground
Paler than the spotlight
Departs the pulsing sound

Red toes peak out from peep-toe laced Sperries,
heels clicking the hard-tiled floor of the dance room.
The black swan stared back from its home within her mirror,
red toes peak out from peep-toe laced Sperries.
She twirled and twirled, the swan did the same.
Each day the swan came to play, chipping the polish with every dance,
until the red toes were chipped and nearly gone.

Hushed, like a morning before sunrise, 
grace floods in without threat.
A sudden flutter of piano keys cues
a story to unravel onto something
so much more interesting
than pages of paper.
To eerie tunes and haunting hums,
she brushes, feather-like, across my eyes—
a pinnacle of innocence
that humbles me to the warmest tears.
She does not speak but tells me everything.
So beautifully, with pointed toes
and arms as weightless as summer clouds,
my imagination falls to her tiny mercy.
The little girl in the light blue dress,
who became
my favorite storyteller.

She dances,
Alone.
In such grace and poise
Positioned in between the tallest buildings
And she poses
For the camera
The bright flashes

Or on stage
In the spotlight
Twirling and twisting
Not a hair out of place
Not a step out of line
Not a breath unplanned

Trained to be accurate
Self destructing, but so well collected
The most beautiful dancer the world has ever seen.