Learning to Dance, 1956
For Marlene Broich
It was the 50s, and all of us
were kids, but you were older—
almost a woman—and you would
teach me to dance. You were
the dark-haired child in a family
of blondes, slightly exotic, wilder,
my best friend’s sister.
In your father’s basement,
you took my hand and showed me
how to hold you—how to hold
a woman. I was fourteen and knew
already how to be awkward. You knew
I was falling into shadows. When I breathed
your hair, I was no longer in the forest
but had broken through
to a clearing where tall grasses whispered
and swayed, where white-petalled daisies
and violet clover blossomed in profusion.
You moved me deeper into the music
and made a meadow spring up around me.
Your body showed me that I had strength
to change the moment, if only the quiet
power of a summer breeze . . .
When you said I would be a good dancer,
that I had rhythm
that
I could swing,
I held you close: some day,
I would find the one
who would pull me near to her in love,
not mercy; I would dance with her
and learn her secret names.
First Dance
The music crooned,
muting the cries
of young bodies
in the dark
basement,
amplifying hungers:
we were awkward
lovers!
tortured
into fruitless
postures
on stiff couches:
ungainly, acned,
swindled
by promises . . .
the insistent music
teasing us into
corners:
promising tenderness,
satisfied hands,
a taste of unison—
swearing we could move
forever
between successes
You were prim
as a ballerina
but less steady:
in our pas de deux
I pulled you close
as I could,
impatient
with restrictions—
you moved when I moved
but kept your distance
© 2002 Charles Fishman
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Charles
Fishman is director of the Distinguished Speakers Program at the State
University of New York at Farmingdale, where he previously directed
the Visiting Writers Program for 18 years. His books include Mortal
Companions, The Firewalkers, Blood to Remember: American
Poets on the Holocaust, and The Death Mazurka (Timberline Press),
which was selected by the American Library Association as one of the
outstanding books of the year (1989) and nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer
Prize in Poetry. He was final judge for the 1998 Capricorn Book Award,
served as Poetry Editor for both the Journal of Genocide Studies and
Cistercian Studies Quarterly, and is currently Associate Editor of The
Drunken Boat, a Web-based poetry review. His 7th chapbook,