that new years eve it rained
and I said
something witty and unrememberable enough
about gravity, these days, and all that water.

the wet-blown silhouettes of trees
brushed and flung at the semi-black.
I listened for spaces that I knew were there
in between but couldn’t find them.

white (that white of fire and dying)
dolloped sometimes the sky’s pale dark
and sometimes wired it. leaving the party
I went out into a blue moon’s park.

in the splatter I walked, afraid then not.
of memory, people, and people with memories.
I was a nearly-drenched and clinging thing
in that wispy, once-crisp, borrowed jacket.

still forty-five minutes and I am sorry.
I’m desultory and I am sore.
I am sorried and worried and vision-poor.
it’s the clock coming ‘round. it’s the new black book

for another frightening, undocumented passage.
if the planet’s mass weren’t quite so massive
we’d aim out there a sickle-thought
to hook us, roaring, far and up.

I made a decision between inside and not.
necessary skeleton turned to light and salt
and then insistent rain sending morse from god
became orbiting blood.

Love is

also

what it isn’t

that is

always a

relation

to obstacles.

We’ve dismantled the lounge room.
Normally it has table, four chairs, hammock,
sitting-corner, lamps and shelves. But
rehearsals have been going here
since at least a week. The floor now
caked with the sweet sweat of dancing.
The floorboards shiny from the
push and glide of fabric. And the
sore inhabitants giggle-limping about
inner-thighs and calves a mess
from those high flick-kicks,
those kick ball-changes.

The table has been unravelled
into old door and two trestles.
The chairs are up against the laundry
and the sitting-corner’s a right shambles.
The hammock hangs except when we
hook it to the side, for the thrice weekly sessions.
Kaleena, Emma and me. Puffing, discussing
the in-and-outs and finer points of
choreography.
The costumes have been planned: a simple,
stylish black-white with highlights.
Hair big, of course, and ankles held firm
in warmers. It’s not quite Fame, nor is it
Flashdance. It is, for me, all those afternoons
on orange carpet, for the others I can’t know.
Those afternoons of nutting it out. The 4/4 counts,
the choice of arms and legs and rhythms.
Serious, rigorous business of twelve year-olds.
In those days the side-splits were nothing at all.
Jump up and land, somehow with feet wide
like wingspan. Mum somewhere and the
record player working. Or even
(cos I loved it) the reel-to-reel
playing the Supremes: Baby-love.

We have to get in this one last practice.
This ridiculous, ambitious, gorge-awful show.
A last time, perhaps, because we may soon
be the mums off somewhere, with a stereo on
(or probably a dock), and other small bodies
running, running, leaping and squealing
stepping, turning, swirling and wheeling
with quick minds, cutting the air and time
into something beautiful.