a sestina
Walking
is forgotten dancing.
I’m
hidden in the shadows
avoiding
fingers, hair and eyes
and arms
that might cast
stones,
or break my violet
quiet,
forcing me against the wall.
I move
with rippling sleekness on the wall
like a
cat whose dancing
hip bones
bring a violet
tint out
of the shadows
in the
black fur: a purple cast
that
melts to black before your eyes.
But this
is the voyage of my eyes
as I move
next to the wall.
Carefully my glance is cast
Carefully my glance is cast
to trap
the forms dancing
into the
light haloes, from the shadows.
The human
form is a single violet
blossoming
in a valley where a violet
never
grew. The glint of eyes
are seeds
that threaten shadows,
threaten
to push them to the wall
and to
include even me in the dancing,
to make
me a member of the cast.
But ages
ago my life was cast
and
nothing, not even the violet
color
that I can see dancing
in your
stranger’s eyes
will free
me from this reliable wall
or from
these comforting shadows.
A watcher
was meant to live in shadows.
It
thrills the blood like the cast of dice against the rough wall
tumbling
into a spot of violet
motor
oil, and then straining the eyes
to see,
through the stain, the spots dancing.
My eyes
cast
violet
shadows
on the dancing wall.
on the dancing wall.
Tim Fitzmaurice
