complications – The BeZine

from a rain forest

Here the dancer stops

to regain her balance

and re-elaborate the distance

In the Empire of Light, Michael Palmer

I DANCE FOR THEM

Jamie Dedes

We danced in step we four, a pas de quatre on river rocks,

me dreaming wild of unicorns and rainbows.

In that faraway place of raging river, ancient Cloister –

escaping to the city with my once-young mother,

embracing antique stories told in graceful moves and music

made for those with better breeding, more cultivated minds.

Home, our home, a place of first loves, unfounded hope

where simmering, Sidto* served soup to my sister,

a dark-olive girl-fugue in tar black and char dust.

In that place whirling with church spires and myrtle trees,

hooting and shrieking, we strode tortured shores,

then buried our anger in silence, bitter as bile.

I broke my ballerina legs in a premature grand jeté.

I failed to heal those fissured old hearts.

We were lost then, somewhere out in crazy time, lazy mind –

passing green humid summers, silver crisp winters,

fielding the slings of earth-bound distress. Home . . .

At home, such a tangled skein of love and lies and ties,

where, by some bogey breeze, we danced lockstep on river rocks,

me dreaming wild of unicorns and rainbows . . .

Solitary now, alone now above rainforest layers of fertile mind –

my energy moves triumphant, a pas marché on gray status clouds,

which rain down hard-won poems in roses, willow greens, and light.

With twice found hope and tender love, I dance for them.

* Sidto – grandmother, derived from the Arabic.

Dance terms:

pas de quatre – a dance for four.
grand jette – a broad, high leap with one leg stretched forward and one stretched behind. In effect, a “split” that is airborne.
pas marché – the regal marching-step of the premiere danseuse, the principal female dancer in a ballet company