The Dance Teacher
She doesn’t care that her butt
looks big, and it is big...
Ginormous even.
She sticks it out, stretches further,
as far as she can,
And then, it’s moving,
Like a mountainside,
an avalanche,
And hey now! hey now,
- You want to look away -
But the weight of it is too much,
And it’s all moving.
And then, for a second, it seems
Suspended
And it shifts, just slightly
to the left,
And you can see the shape
of the dance,
The movement, the steps.
The body is still there,
But it’s the rhythm of the thing
that pulls the eye now,
Still there, underneath.
And unselfconscious as a cat,
she writhes,
The shape of it lithe and sinuous.
These steps perfected when
the body was fluid
Still pulling the dance,
and she remembers,
- Blithe and large – she remembers,
And hey nonny,
She remembers, hey nonny, nonny.