Wont Dancer

What is the form informing you? The soul
that fits your flitting like a body wholly glove?
And here your hands both lose and gain control –
for you are wont to dance for very love

of something we can hardly see: once or
twice you start back from a space, as if
your spirit-body had come face to face for
just one moment and we ask, Who is it,

there, Astaire, the airy shadow that you cast
in seeming dream-relief to be replaced
as quickly with your self-effacing smile?

I Won’t Dance means, How long can you last
not dancing with another who’s erased
as soon as seen? No trace. What kind of style

is this? What models, what shuffling story
works its way from wrap-wing hands to spine,
throwing legs around across ahead

to keep you turning, burning up the floor? We
nod and smile, and watch your body climb
a staircase spiraled in your mind. That said,

there are those shoes, that tux, your hair –
just like one of us, out on the town
all waxed and brushed and shined as if you were
merely, by your movements, getting down

the spirit of the age in terpsichore.
And maybe that is true, and your control
spun out of almost nothing but the floor,
surrounded by the bodies you make whole.