Tennis Shoe Dancing
Not a flashback screen.
Real-time.
Nobody is dancing.
But the music is saying something.
I slick-step for a couple measures, wobble shoulders,
lift up a ghost watermelon, throw it.
She is ready too.
Other than lowering cholesterol,
our moves delight in useless.
We are now the people's dance.
They are watching.
She has no hysteria about some need to talk.
Good.
I dodge to avoid a pass rush in the red zone.
She water-skis on my left, arms out,
possibly mowing the front yard by hand.
I am cutting grass on this hilly flat lake,
looking up smiling on a slow cut across the swale.
Somebody's F-150 jerks the rope taut around my stomach
so I jet across the water,
silver against sunlight, rocking on the porch swing.
She turns her head to look at where I've been
and then to where I'm going again.
We are the hammer-ride at the county fair.
We're doing this in tennis shoes, everybody.
My palms are now a glacier scooping out lakebeds
a thousand years ago,
the glacier on this spot, below the dancing floor.
My arms steer the F-150 onto the lake.
Mow the lawn clockwise.
Reach out, everybody.
Hold my arms.
The music will keep our photo in its wallet
to remember us by.