for Stacy B.,
who is both, of course*



a third floor
walk-up,
to wake
us up,
really up,
perhaps obtain
a provision
to a question,
someone knew
needed answering,
needed us,
also,
to witness and testify

is the dancer,
a diplomat,
or is the diplomat,
a dancing naïf?

hard by the East River,
in a building unheated,
the Brooklyn Hipsters
patrol the streets,
drinking hard,
their homegrown lager,
against the
December winter chill,
all wearing their
very long or very short
hair heads,
in unisex
watch caps

so too,
we have come to watch,
but we are,
uncapped,
open minded,
needy to get it straight,
once and for all

we crossed an
olde Dutch bridge,
having come,
to a land almost overseas,
traveling recklessly,
without our Manhattan
diplomatic immunity pouch

looking for answers for
questions long lingering
in a tall women's New Orleans soul

no biggie -
be both
says the rational fool

irrationally
failing to understand
the logic that
dancing
is more than
just a
single daily, caloric rich,
ration,
but a
blood type,
that doctors
don't easy recognize,
needy for
constant spice transfusions,
perpetual transformation

is this your answer then?

the diplomat departs soon
first, and not before,
having danced in a black hole,
where all is annexed, animated,
but also, annihilated

a dancing metaphor message,
reflective perfect,
of a too oft,
cruel world,
to our official
US of A messenger
of, by and for,
we, the people
of our mutual states,
her audience and employer,
nota bene:

Morocco and Tunisia
beckon you,
lands where dancing is
not a shouk spice for sale,
but we,
our country,
needs someone who can
nonetheless fluently teach and speak,
dance interpretively,
a précis of
how to dance to
reveal our best,
American song

so I have my answer,
and perhaps,
she does too

a dancer first,
a dancer always,
in a national troupe
that I am a member of,
even though I can't dance a lick,
and my Arabic is but
a few healthy and choice curses,
a linguistic skill of mine,
from traveling in many unfamiliar climes,
always, a handy tool

proof positive,
we need specialists,
who can cross boundaries,
real, or cartographer-drawn,
artifice dividers that demand
diplomatic dancer skills in overcoming
a resistant world to
American ideals

so we train our dancers
to be diplomats,
our diplomats
to be dancers,
flexible, but all possessing
that mark of a ramrod carriage,
the upright walk that
is the passport of joy,
of those who dance
for all the world,
an answer so good,
it simply makes
good