Produced by Dennis Camire
This week’s poem is by Marcia Brown of Cape Elizabeth. Her most recent book is “When We Invented Water,” published by Moon Pie Press.
Traffic Dance
By Marcia Brown
At that intersection where eighteen lanes of traffic slow, stop
And flow again over the bridge and into the city, or
Out to the mall, where the light will never change and we all
Wait and wait and wait to go wherever it is we’re suddenly
Desperate to go — there she is — on the curb: wild uncombed
Mane, mashup of strappy tops crisscrossed
With earbud wires, spandex tights, and running shoes — jigging
Her strange St. Vitus dance: chin-jut, head-bob, shoulders
Pulsing time to a hammering mad music only she can hear,
Forced by the lights to stop, she can’t stop, is a dervish
Dancer, funky chicken elbow flap, a fierce Mick Jagger tilted strut,
Booty-shaking dive down to the sidewalk, scissor-
Legged leap back up, unfazed to be what one might call
A public spectacle, a wanton, free, Mad Hatter’s Futterwacken
March to her own drummer — what, as I strum my fingers
On the wheel, unfurls in me a certain rue, the sting of envy.
Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu
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