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poet.
performer. activist. teacher.
MILES
DAVIS SAID...
Instead of playing what's there,
try playing what's not there...
Like the space created between our two bodies
at dawn when, half-waking,
your foot, in bed, brushes against mine
and rests for the heartbeat
it takes for the physical and emotional
to connect
and then decide,
instinctively, to pull away.
Play the space there,
and then the one
where the tears do not come, in the waking,
followed by the one created between us when I get up
from bed and leave the room,
your arms too late outstretched
and empty,
our hearts like closed hands
full of love we can no longer give,
alchemizing to a dark ache.
Play the echoes of the spaces
in those cupped hands, I think,
finally in the other room
now, remembering
the one snowy egret and the one blue heron
on the beach on Wednesday morning;
the heron in the surf, standing more rooted and graceful
than I, whose gaze left the ocean once
to take in my presence,
and the egret behind her,
playing peek-a-boo with the waves.
Play the space between them
and then the spaces between them and me,
like this: The paths full of dawn and element,
sanded glass and a breaking sun.
© 2001 Dora E. McQuaid
from the forthcoming chapbook shot with green
© 2002 Dora E. McQuaid, to be released 6/1/02
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