please note: We will be taking the month of July off from posting regular blog posts. Blog Posts will resume again in August.

The Dance
Michael Jinkins

1.

Two storks weave between the clouds I have no idea how high above this garden. In Two Three time they waltz, spin, circling one another to the steady rhythm of Chopin’s Nocturne in E flat major. Music fills my garden. The northeasterly wind cool and intermittent at ground level, blowing the fig tree back and forth, its late spring fruit just beginning to show. The storks disappear for a moment, catching, wheeling on great winds I cannot imagine, making sport of the winds, bending space itself, two partners dizzy with their dance. Some smart aleck will put down their behavior to some wooden explanation, but I know they are dancing. Birds too feel joy. When they vanish from my sight, they are just stopping for a gulp of champagne at a table beside the dance floor. The next dance begins. Pausing to remember the steps of a mazurka, counting, counting, and off, I see them again. How can they hear the music so far away?

2.

Magazine Street on a crisp morning. Winter, the sun is shining on a young mother and a child, maybe five. The child wears a hair band with the ears and horn of a unicorn on it. I think I can remember great distances running into my past, but for the life of me, I cannot recall a time when a walk to the drugstore was such an adventure. The child dances beside her mother, chatting, singing, chatting. A small bird lights on a rose bush. The child laughs as though a bird is the most ridiculous notion she has ever heard of. Only a few steps more, she takes up a stick and fights a lion or a dragon or some other beast. She is fierce and free. I’ve never known a fighting unicorn. But, then, what do I know. The danger past, she dances as her mother opens the door to Walgreens for her.