Behind the Dancer's Mask

Image 25 Maelstrom (click to enlarge)

Vers la Flamme

1. The Consultation
   
   Nothing
   It was nothing
   (I whispered to myself)
   A little twinge
   What nerve my body had to speak like this!
   
   It came and went
   This little nothing
   Came and went and came again
   To stay
   
   I grew accustomed to its voice
   The rise and fall and rise again
   And always there
   
   I danced attendance secretly
   An upstart improvising choreographer
   
   But when this foreign aria of my flesh
   Became atonally grotesque
   On you I called
   
   
   
2. The Stay
   
   Do you know how scared I am
   Behind this dancer's mask
   Do you, dear Doctor?
   How the weight of every graceless step
   Each kiss omitted
   Every sin of my imperfect life
   Every foolish thing I've ever done
   Has found its perfect resting place?
   You must know (I'm whispering again!)
   What I deserve
   
   Last night
   The high-pitched startling clamor of your instruments
   Summoned the kindly shades
   Who came and went, came and went
   Cool hands and faces undismayed
   By my rebellion
   
   And as they thronged and ministered
   My restless eye alit
   On an absurdity above
   So like a kite in buoyancy and shape
   I couldn't help by laugh
   And fumble for its string
   To tether me
   
   
3. The Cure
   
   Success!
   Statistically speaking I'm a cure
   I've graduated, I will be a
   Dot
   Among a bunch of other dots
   All clustered round a line on some important doctor's graph
   So straight and true and upward sloping toward the heavens
   (My sense of humor has returned, you see)
   
   You tell me that the odds are stacked
   Against my visitor's return
   And in the narrow sense you may be right --
   I hope you're right!
   
   Eventually, though, a relative will pay a call
   And then I will most courteously receive
   
   But meantime I aspire to the state of trees
   Root, trunk and branch
   Sunlight and wind and the flashing pirouettes of topmost leaves
   Whose music when they fall
   Remains unbound by rules of harmony
   

- Emanuel E. Garcia

Vers la Flamme was published in The Pharos, Vol 68, Winter 2005, pp. 28-9.

Image 26 Epiphany (click to enlarge)