From this Minute

(to a three-year-old, on the first day of class)

From this minute, your best-loved frock
Will be your practice tutu.
Already, you treasure gleaming shoes
With toes clattering.
From this minute, you enter a world
You will never leave.
Point, curtsy, one-two-three.
Rhythms laugh in your blood;
Five-six-seven-eight, Waltz-clog, time-step.

You will not know when
Music becomes your marrow,
When pieces of the universe
Become leaf-dancer, stream-dancer, deer-dancer,
Bird-, butterfly-, star-, snowflake-dancer,
And you need to dance as you need to breathe.
Your feet will refuse to be still.
Your calves will tense, as you watch ballerinas:
Glissade, assemble,  temps leve,
You make art of yourself -- the moon, your spotlight,
Flowers, bouquets thrown at your feet.

You will not miss
What you decline:
Game, race, picnic, parade,
Mall-dawdling,
Dares and disasters.
"I can't   I have dance."


From this minute,
You define whatever you become
Mother-dancer, doctor-dancer, lawyer-dancer,
Teacher-, poet-, shopgirl-, skier-dancer.

In a century or so,
Clearing your room at Sunset Villa,
Your grandchild will clutch to her breast
Pink satin pointe slippers
You could not discard.

(c)Patsy Anne Bickerstaff