JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

To dance a childhood

about a girl in Sofia

growing up on lakes of ice

gypsy music playing on their banks

accompanying clangs of street trams

patter and pirouette of little feet

bare legged tutus twirling

at the dance lesson

freezing and bending to piano’s beat

 

To dance a childhood

about a boy at the seaside

flanked by a row of East Coast hotels

a sun carpeted bridge, a boardwalk

grains of sand that cling

to bare feet across the peeling deck

dancing solo wetly over the crabs,

the salt, the blue stretching away,

away beyond the waves to distant

shores, distant warships coming closer

 

To dance a childhood

about a wrinkled child

on green and steaming dunes

cavorting, rolling down glaciers

of orchestrated fountains

through forests of waving jaja trees

down to a chocolate lake

three suns agleaming in the sky

 

To dance a childhood

with all your senses undressed

naked as the rain

on a lake of ice

on an ocean vista stretching away

rolling through the jaja trees

 

And say, and say again

yes, I was there