The Dance
The leaves were dancing
And prancing and whirling, and twirling,
Like a top with dizzy abandon,
And I leapt and I stepped to their lively Borree',
In the blustering street where I make myself home.
With us was waving,
The grass and the shrubbery,
Green shiny leaves,
Flailing for joy.
They tossed back and forth
Uprooting their fear
And the leaves and the wind and the lawn and I danced
To the tune of the skies.
But to my surprise,
The cumulus masters were moving
So slowly in the blue.
They processed entirely slow and exceedingly stately, eyeing the Earth.
And they seemed to be saying,
To my flourishing friends:
"Your movement is lurid, horrid, disgusting
Some spirit has trapped you into a trance.
Like a reptile, it will hold you, if you keep up your prancing."
But the grass and myself
Just laughed and kept jumping
And shouting like oceans slapping the rocks.
And I thought of E. A. Poe,
With all his dread lore,
And his moping and groping
In the darkness of night.
All his clamoring bells
And howling of cats
And the rapping and tapping
On his dark chamber door
With that bad Raven waiting and shiny
Like an oil drowned fish,
On the sledge of the shore.
The Raven perches droning,
And crying, "Lenore"
Bringing depression and sadness
On the thick midnight air.
And I thought of how Poe
And his bloodthirsty words
Hissed at the daylight
And the calling of birds and the grass
And the bushes and pirouetting wind
And my most happy dancing
With the "Firebird" of leaves.
I looked up and thought
How Poe and those clouds,
Both moved and are moving
Like prisoners of Sorrow,
And I stopped.
And was saddened.
Then I took back to dancing
And whirling with leaves,
In the gold and red autumn
With my partners the trees.
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© 1987 - Scott Lawrence Lawson