Contra Dance

My heart is fed by so many tributaries
and spits and splits at least two ways!
How difficult to keep straight
what quickens circulation, who eases its pace:
a lose-lipped smile here, fingers dancing on letters there;
the openness of letting and the strung bow;
the tight wanting of one truth and still, wide planes
that laugh at those.

What is love if not a contra dance
where many arms spin many beings,
where we share the floor - no one's territory -
and the music moves the mood we've got to ache with to obey?

How to Read Poetry

"What is poetry? And why has it been around so long? … When you really feel it, a new part of you happens, or an old part is renewed, with surprise and delight at being what it is...The first thing to understand about poetry is that it comes to you from outside you, in books or in words, but that for it to live, something from within you must come to it and meet it and complete it. Your response with your own mind and body and memory and emotions gives a poem its ability to work its magic; if you give to it, it will give to you, and give plenty." - James Dickey, author