The Art of Teetering

It is not what you wish for.
You want solidity. Certainty.

It is not what you wish for,
but it is the nature of your life,

shifting seas, shifting sand,
the earth beneath your feet dances,

the people, places, things, opportunities,
rise and fall like mountains. Only faster.

Faster than you can dance.
But dance you do,

Mr Bojangles in double time,
table dancing in the midst of a barfight,

growing better with age,
finding the rhythm of chaos,

Of balancing and rebalancing
to music rarely your own

until you discover the solidity you seek
is not in the world,

but the dance.

About this poem

The other night the woman I love and I were talking about all the changes in our life over the past decade. That led to the painting I did last week, which led to this poem this morning.

Tom