Dancing time and space
I
Men are not
forbidden here,
but seldom risk this
hall
packed full with
women of a certain age.
– Mindful
attention to the knees.
Poor Emma Bovary was
just a needy child,
sad Anna K not
thirty
when they died so
painfully.
– Eyes softly
focussed.
It's safe to say
that most us
are twice their age
or more, well past
hope or fear of
tragic passion.
– Mindful
attention to the hips.
We do our best to
undulate our stiffened bones
like yogic cats,
like swaying trees,
like steadfast
Sanskrit-speaking warriors.
– Soft face,
easy breath.
We are an antique
navy of creaking ships
afloat on the
parquet floor
in boat pose, the
navasana.
– Mindful
attention to the back.
We pull our navels
gently to our spines,
breathe in, breathe
out,
breathe in.
– Slow breath,
steady mind.
We breathe.
II
Standing, we are
Shiva, dancing time
and space into
being, perhaps a little wobbly
over rusty ankles on
our rainbow mats.
Still, poised with
one knee just-bent,
braced, strong, the
other hip swung open
like the gate to a
new multiverse,
its thigh and foot
high-tilted, balanced
by ballerina hands
held sideways-lifted
in a frozen moment
from creation's dance,
we touch the
electricity
of
space and time.
I was
well pleased to have the chance to catch up with Jenny Blackford here
in Melbourne when this tip top poem was highly commended in the
Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Prize. Jenny
and her husband Russell live in Newcastle, with their well-beloved
cat, and they happened to have planned a trip to Melbourne, and then
Jenny heard her poem was short listed, and the dates co-incided.
Fate. Or something very like that. We had a calming drink at Young &
Jackson's and then headed on up to Collected Works for the shindig.
And how well Jenny read the poem when her turn came. I was very taken
with it. I am picking that it will be a foundation poem for Jenny's
next book. Her first book, The Duties of a Cat (Pitt
Street Poetry) is still available I think.
http://pittstreetpoetry.com/jenny-blackford/
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