Saw Nederlands Dans Theater tonight and fell in love with a piece called "The Second Person" and the choreography of Crystal Pite. Amused to see that it was trashed by the newspaper's reviewer who found lots to love about the piece that left me cold. Art's funny that way, moving us as it will move us. We walked in the rain back to our car, parked alone on a bridge near the cathedral. That was perhaps the only poem of the evening. I did a bit of writing, but this is something I worked on earlier. It's an offering to the night, words before sleeping that perhaps will seed a dream.
Fable
In the fable we try to write of the sea, the broad bay empties one afternoon, villagers flocking to the treasure-strewn sand. The gathering crowd heads for the edge, fills shirts and pails and shallow palms. They marvel at the oddness of this shore that once was sea. The sun sets and rises, sets and rises, and soon even fishermen lose the rhythm of water that once swept in and out, a rocking that seemed ingrained but was disposable as a habit, abandoned in a week, a day, or 40. They forget what they’ve forgotten. Someone warns of the illusion but we remain, even when the line of white appears so far away, and then the sound of distant, churning waves. The day is bright, the mood the opposite of fear until what’s closing in comes down. All of us begin run, though some turn back for milk or stay for one more shell, those last grabbing roof or branches as the water takes them, surges past. We become: the one who fled, the one who stayed, the one who warned, the one we lost, the ones who write the fable that pretends there was folly or blame in this, that pretends there was anything but the inevitable movement of earth and time and mind. We become the ones who almost remember.
Photo by super devoika, Rusalia Bazamit, via flickr.
