"What Women Dance For" by Elaine Smokewood read by Brooke Hessler
Channel: Remembering Dr. Elaine Smokewood, Poet and Teacher
Date: 2014-11-02

What Women Dance For  by Elaine Smokewood (for Dale Ray Philips)

On Dickson Street, a crowd checks out the band
at Lily’s bar.  “We still sound pretty good
for three old hicks,” the guy on lead guitar says
at our table before the second set begins.
He tilts his bushy mustache, sucks
the long neck of his beer.  His wife,
he says, has run away and left him
for the church—the Unitarians, to name names,
some cosmic craps who don’t believe in sin—
or that’s the way the story reads to him.
He takes a long drag on his cigarette
then heads back to the stage.
It’s that dark woman’s soul that troubles him.
 
Smoke lifts and pools in the middle air.
All around us, men and women rise up
from their chairs to come together
on the crowded floor in thirst of miracle.
Dale and I join them.  “Music always
makes me think of writing,” he says, squints
behind wire rims.  “You know. Repetition
and difference.  Climax that pounds like a heartbeat.
The sweet ache of resolution.”  We dance an arc
across the floor, mouth to warm ear,
shoes wet with spilled beer.  Overhead,
a bushy mustache quavers like the angel
who watches us and plays for all our souls.
 
The music stops.  The room is racked by light.
We blink, as if we all have wakened
from the same dream, which brings us,
time after time, back to this stage.
The players pack their instruments away
as worn chatter rises, chairs scrape,
and we stream out into a night that seems
estranged and different even from itself.
Couples drift, break apart, linger.
Dale waves goodbye, steers homeward
as the planet veers toward morning.
Snow sifts like the silence of God.
 
Source:  Glassfire. Feb 2006. http://www.peglegpublishing.com/glassfire/whatwomendancefor.htm