Two Step

Sauvez mon âme,
Priez pour moi,
Je suis condamné
Aux flammes d’enfer.

Start on left foot, I’m the gent,

four mile portage, hay foot, straw,
me and Lindsey in a groove,
belly bringing feet along,
trembling bowl of jello cubes,
floating in our basket frame,
giving each other our weight.

One and one and two and two
If there were stanzas, how long
would the lines be? Maybe each
the same. A scamper of some
kind. Left sliding out a bit.
Right sliding between her feet.
Can’t remember the pattern.

A lot of the sky has clouds
in it. Unless it’s just foam.
State Fair dress-up—Monique, pink
morning glory trumpet dress.
Me nothing but my fox hat.
There’s the Miracle of Birth,
in the circle of our feet.

Brandy and Tom teach old time
to their high-school students. Each
year, a little older. Now
a brown-haired girl I’ve seen here
for years leads the morning jam.
Walsers are in it: Lolo:
What a fiddler he is, damn!

The instant of this writing,
Tom receiving a tune from
a very accomplished young
woman fiddler. Up-bowing
the open G. Willowy
tracings on the E. Fine ice
inscriptions on window glass.

Fiddle me this! We’ll all be
fantastic fiddlers when the
Crackdown comes. Tom starting the
up-beat to the A-part on
a down stroke. “I think it works
out better if you go up.”
There we go!—Tom’s got it now.

So what do you want to do?
Play that part all the way through?
“Up-down,” says the child who wants
to be swept off the floor. Up
stroke catch the adjacent string.
Loose arm in blue sweater sleeve
out of her black nylon vest.

So many by this time taught
to bow up on the off-beat
(catching the adjacent string)
to prepare the strong down bow.
Evolution happening
before my eyes, perhaps soon
wiped clean away in the Flood.

Everything will have to be
invented over again—
like the light-engendered eye,
evolving full four or more
separate times—no worries
we won’t learn it all again.
Beware the backwards right-hand

star!—most right-hand stars spinning
clockwise, let us say (a left-
hand star spins the other way),
but now you’re called on to spin
clockwise while walking backwards,
a sinister disaster
that will rip the star apart.

Start on right foot, I’m the gal,

four-mile portage, straw foot, hay,
me and Lindsey in a groove,belly bringing feet along,
trembling bowl of jello cubes,
floating in our basket frame,
giving each other our weight.