JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

They dance in twos, threes and fours

in lines, but he liked best the couplets

 

who stepped dainty, skirts lifted, keeping time

to clockwork music, then moving figure-eight apart

 

and together, by virtue of their conjoined brevity

minuets, gigs, barcaroles, sometimes pausing briefly

 

between numbers to munch cucumber sandwiches

sip champagne and gossip quick delightfuls

 

then return for a perfect quadrille

touching fingertips, peas in a pod, frozen, smiling

 

entangled in tempestuous relationship with himself

the artist sometimes wished he were a frozen pair of peas