Your Spirit Spoke

Dance dance dance dance dance dance yeah!
                   -- The Beach Boys


YOUR SPIRIT SPOKE

Your spirit spoke to me last night
after I closed my eyes
and opened my mind--
your spirit told me

about your secret strings--
invisible wires that pull you
up and down and around--
this way and that--
according to plan.

Your spirit told me:
you don’t remember, but
you agreed to this plan in advance--
even those pulls that place you
in the path of a lightening bolt
are part of the agreement.

Yes--
your flipping and flapping and flopping
have all been choreographed

for a modern dance
expressing a courageous struggle
to answer life's shocking demands

performed to a music
that may sound jazzy
but the truth is
those notes are set on the bars of a score:

the bars not a prison--merely restraint:
the restraint experienced by all spirits
moving through time and space--

the restraint of human learning.

Yes, that’s what your spirit said
to me last night
as we watched you move
from a corner in your sunlit room

and when I awoke
in a light that reminded me of your sun
I decided to share the dream
because your spirit also said
you’ve refused to hear
its positive message--

that is:
how you work so hard to build strength
following a design quite brilliant--

no, you don’t see the beauty
of your fierce dance

as I do now
after listening to your spirit.

But despite its wisdom
I still can’t quite accept
what your spirit said
about my stumbles and slips--
your spirit claims
I can find the shine of my own elegance
in the luminous mirror of your dance steps.

© 2020, Michael R. Patton
the truth of the dream: poetry ebook

Talk Sing Walk Dance

author's note:

"I think of myself more as a song and dance man, y'know."
                -- Bob Dylan


TALK SING WALK DANCE

In the experiment of human life
I have realized this paradox:

the common activity
of walking and talking
quickly exhausts me
whereas
the exertion
of song and dance
gives me new breath.

So I've decided to see
every step as a dance move
and hear every word as a song note--

yeah, I say:
we dance and sing and dance
as we talk and walk and talk.

As a result of enacting this mindset
my sails fill out full
even when I'm doing the mundane stuff
such as filing files or talking to a robot.

Nevertheless
my lazy head often forgets this tactic

but then remembers
when I begin to huff again
and my legs grow leaden.

© 2019, Michael R. Patton
searching for my best beliefs: poetry ebook