A Dancer’s Winter
BY GWYN HENRY; ILLUSTRATION BY LIZ BRENT
Happy National Poetry Month from Stance on Dance!
Written to the Movement Artists’ Ensemble:
Quiet now our feet & deep
our dance-less nod
dreaming perhaps of movement
dreaming perhaps of floor
thirsting for mirrored light
& yes quick silver notes
that rise us through doorways
only our bodies can explain
like leaves whose dances
have been felled
to the leveling
of snow
we curl to embryos
our lives sleeping in our bellies
tired spent content
to lie supine
upon pale days
& cold nights
brief bloodless beauties–
divas with forgetfulness
of sweat & radiant musk
& graze of hand, ricochet of hips–
no longer receiving weight
not our own
nor trusting our bones
to other bones
each to her own
slumber, separate…
all the rest absent,
sundered & scattered,
by this fallow time.
–January 2011
Escondido, California
Gwyn Henry is the woman behind Movement Artists Ensemble (MAE), a group of women in Escondido, CA who are moving into their middle years and beyond and who come together to improvise, take video footage, and weave the footage into dance poetry on film. To learn more, click here.
One Response to “A Dancer’s Winter”
Love this post post! Liz Brent’s illustration is wonderfully evocative of the gestating Winter spirit of the poem… while now, with the return of the sun, MAE is beginning to stir…gearing up for Spring adventures! Thanks\ you for the post… We are inspired to dance on and on.
Comments are closed.