THE POETRY MENTOR www.robertmcdowell.net
Read a Friend’s Heart
May 10th, 2008
Today is the birthday of Fred Astaire (1899), the master
of American dance.
Thanks to Alice Gardner (www.wideawakeliving.com), I
wish you a happy Pangea Day (see www.pangeaday.org);
tomorrow is Mother’s Day (and the birthday of Irving Berlin!).
Mothers are goddesses of the universal dance, aren’t they? As
we first stir into being, we’re imprinted with rhythms and beats that
emanate from the energy cores of mothers, so that by the time we
emerge from the womb we’re already dancers whether we know it or
not.
We dance like the blades of grass that weave and sway in the
breeze. We’re tugged and pulled and reshaped by gravity, by the
moon, and as we age we dance to the mysterious energy influences of
moods. We create dances in our work movements and in all the
relationships we form. We learn new steps every day, even more if
we’re awake, if we’re paying attention. Even the trees and mountains
are dancing, always dancing. The world, itself improbably dancing
gorgeously in the vastness of space, hosts a pageant of dancing! Here
is a passage from the poem Four for Sir John Davies by Theodore
Roethke:
I take this cadence from a man named Yeats:
I take it and I give it back again:
For other tunes and other wanton beats
Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain.
Yes, I was dancing mad, and how
That came to be the bears and Yeats would know.
May dancing bless you in all that you dream about and do!
Deep Peace of the Light of the World To You,
Robert McDowell, www.robertmcdowell.net
