The lady moves, wild and sensual,
rhythmic and anticipatory
in the dim lights shrouding
a dance floor.
She has come here to unburden
a pent-up heart and will,
muddied with the moneyed way of living.
She has come to commune with heart beat,
to allow her feet and hips and hands
to appreciate song
and to gesticulate her reply
en motion.
She has come to the night
for release
from grief and screaming,
rage, hatred, disappointment, and frustration.
Her body is the cauldron
and her dancing the transformation
of a thousand mini-deaths
into joy.
She has come to find
in her dancing
her own soul
and its connection back
to the source.
The dance is her religion.
She does not dream
of fucking
when her wings unfurl on the dance floor.
In fact, her mind is so clear
she thinks of nothing,
allowing the music to consume her.
But the dance floor is a public place,
perhaps unsafe
for the remembering of the sacred.
Perhaps the soul needs confining
within the neat wing-clippings
of conformity and institution
to protect tender women from
the predatory natures
of wild, lustful men.
Perhaps this woman sins
when she dances freely.
Perhaps she has no right
to sweat and sway
to laugh and leap
to stalk the wayward beat
upon the jungle that is the dance floor.
But maybe she
is wild as a panther,
wicked as a crow
who snatches what she sees as beautiful.
Maybe she has no recourse but to dance
lest her lover be devoured by her anger.
Maybe her dancing keeps Kali at bay,
and Durga in check:
keeps the Medusa within her
from turning her heart into stone.
Would you kill the bird that sings?
This dancer has wings.
And within her intricate movements
she recounts the breeze trembling the leaves
on trees and the glide of the creek over stone.
She obeys the will of the Mother
whose pulsing heart thrives in life
and keeps the Great Love flowing.
Though she may be plagued
by restless demons
desiring to impede
the fluidity of her spirit:
she remembers the great darkness
that sought to steal the grace and magic
of her mothers.
The dance is her light in the darkness,
her holy and blessed communion
in a world of men gone mad on profanity.
Her dance is her reunion.