Dance Lesson

Spinning and tumbling,
hands held tight to a DSM,
racing through the routine
questions of sleep and sex,
twisting toward tobacco,
straining to split
grief from depression,
I perform compulsory moves,
even a moment, perhaps, of listening.
Finished in 50 minutes,
speeding to jump
to diagnosis, I nail
my twisted landing
deep in corporate shadow.

But I remember when
psychiatry was ballet, how we danced
to Debussy and dressed technique
with beauty. Back then we studied
the moves of masters, waited for time
between beats, and danced slow
as the limping step of patient partners
whose gaze we held
just beyond reach of our hands.

© CME LLC
12/99

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