Poem for Saturday, September 21, 2013

The Mongolian Waltz

An aging school gymnasium, any handful of dilapidated
concrete buildings--these are the places they do it.

They waltz to the same polka song, frozen on replay,
birthed painstakingly by dust-smothered speakers.

The same accordion expands and contracts, screams
its shrill Bavarian scream in the middle of a desert

in central Asia. In January, when winter refuses to
forgive, I lean against the lukewarm radiator and

watch them count, shuffle, spin. Each pair locks
eyes, shows an inkling of a smile and orbits their own

invisible sun. But their minds--their minds waltz
even more. They waltz through the times their children

grow up and leave home, the times the cold takes
most of their sheep. They waltz through the seasons

to when suddenly it is warm enough to deliver
their foals and to bury their mothers and fathers.

I wait against the radiator, my breath floating above,
knowing one of them will eventually take my hand

and pull me in the dance. I will waltz with her then,
meet her eyes and return her smile. I will spin through

the times winter broke my bones straight to when
I had my picture taken under the crab apple tree

in my grandparents' yard, year after year, blaring red
against the autumn sky.