“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin.
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in.
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove.
Dance me to the end of love.
Dance me to the end of love.”
– Leonard Cohen

Have I not been a dancer the whole of my life?
To the music within my mother’s womb,
To the music of my own heart beating.
I danced ballet at Carnegie,
on the street of Broadway to the songs of “West Side Story.”
I’ve danced myself out of wheelchairs, and out of illnesses.
I danced with Anne Bancroft at The Academy Awards “Governors’ Ball,”
with lovers, earth-mothers and descending angels.
I danced through the 70s and 80s and survived.
And I danced my children toward their births.

And then I danced with you Dagma:
On tropical beaches; 
under the wrought-iron skirts of the Eiffel Tower;
In Piazza San Marco, as waters rose to our feet, with violins playing Strauss at the fringes;
I’ve danced with you shoeless, in high heels and sandals…
In the moonlight and under street lamps, in the rain…
In the jungle, on desert sands, in fields of tomatoes at dawn, and in our gardens…and now,
still most every Sunday, 
in our kitchen.
Thank you for renewing my life daily…in dance.

 Photo of ‘Descending Angel’ By John Wimberley

 Gary Ibsen
April 28, 2019