The Art of Gravity: Poems

Primavera

10 Primavera for Siobhan, Richard, and Deirdre Dunham So what if love is carnality crossdressing as caritas? In spring sex goes dancing spinning at the center of a universe phoney as Ptolemy in which we refuse to disbelieve. The metamorphosis of a goddess I mean a dancer into a mother displaces her capacity for air with roundness formerly a curse. Borne a thousand brilliant nights flown across the stage in the finale of The Four Temperaments she would pose in open fourth forever as in holy conversation. Now with earth she shares stranger energy with the moon peculiar humors a flush of radiance compared with which hot ballerinas embody equanimity. Not bulimia but morning sickness: how can she dance Chloris? purge her blood of thorns and roses to emerge as grace and nurse as Flora?  11 bear up under human changes under indignity this sleekest swiftest vessel taking on the world’s water pushing hard on the equinox devouring the entire spring to bear a daughter? The ballet’s grace clothes desire barely diaphanous gown charitably tumbling about the voluptuous figure beguiling revealing. Light springs from among dark aromatic trees whose oranges participate in the adoration of artifice. Say those three girls circling tentatively in their dance are goddesses— why argue? Even the spear-carrier can disperse the clouds and augur weather fit for an entrance. Let her find welcome in the natural air and in the scent of fruit and let her delight 12 in people and their sidereal motions and appetite. Let her bear no gravity no sorrow and let her discard discord like a worn pummeled dancing shoe. May the concrete on which her first steps stumble turn floral meadow a mortal path strewn with the lucky shards of art. May faithful music dog her steps making them graceful making them rhythmic making them above all suffice for transportation. ...