Slow Dancing with a Poet
A poem by Julia R. DeStefano
Slow Dancing with a Poet
It is summer.
You watch my lines.
You know they emerge from my big heart.
My turned-on nerves play a symphony.
I love it when you watch, though you straddle the doorway.
I sit at my desk, the room of my life where I hang the WANTED sign.
I have the patience of a chess player in the thousandth round.
I have a checkered flag in my back pocket if you’ll start your engine.
I was born wanting — weaving the words that will dream my life whole —
poems that make a suitable bedfellow, offer immortality, and in some miracle promise to love me.
You met me this way -
dancing in circles with my pen in-hand
among books, so many books.
You watched me ignited and whirling into flame,
breathing in the smell of a love like Paradise in the moonlight
with only yes, yes, yes on my radio.
I could feel our bodies wanting to lose their loneliness,
burst like firecrackers in an explosion of color -
you the explorer and I, the map
coming with kisses.
But oh, do you smile sweetly
while you shuffle your feet as I say Live!
The song is the life
and you have but one to sing.
Listen -
can you hear it?
© Julia R. DeStefano
