The Dance of Four Elements

The Dance of Four Elements

I.

She was a stone

figure carved  

out of a marbled

rock mountain

or in the walls

of an ancient temple 

Every movement

was so sturdily

organic, fresh

in the way that tilled

up wet soil is fresh

It was at that moment

the long instant

of the yogi-like pose

she rigidly held   

that I forgot  

she was a person

indeed the same  

(at least genetically)

I had cradled

some time ago. 

II.

She is the light;

the waxy sun crawling

through the window, writhing

around her ankles becomes another smoky

shadow: the useful but minor kindling

 of  poetry captured

by flaring forms.

III.

Anyone could see the haloing auras breezing

around her head and shoulders as if she had danced

right out of some Victorian painting and wafted

onto a stage on some otherwise ordinary afternoon

And will we ever see first the connection instead of the contrast?

IV.

The brightness and the blackness

the firm and the fluid

the near nothingness sound of silent

bodies that are yet conversing, moving

in soliloquies and discourses -

a communing that can be heard over symphony pumped

through the loudspeakers: the music becomes the crackling

rain of a stormy night’s dream.

See how she leans ever so slightly?  

She moves aqueously:  splashing into herself

ringleting with virulent grace

rippling on and on

by: L. Raymond Andrews