By DIANE MEHTA
You can’t risk too much Jenga in a lift
but when you leave her, put your foot down,
exit to the steady earth we merely balance on—
you risk collapse, your knife-edge youth
retracts while you are full of spirit and mistakes.
I didn’t realize lifts were not unconditional.
My drunk idea about who you are,
who lifts who, was half a dream.
I thought life was shorter than ballet was young—
if you collapse a lift, all scenes do not collapse,
but watching, I misunderstood.
In the Jenga of weight distribution, the game,
she cherishes the steps that lift her closer
instead of pulling away; her handprints
on your thigh, your spine on her ribcage.
Perhaps to transfer stillness is more efficient
than salvaging ruin, but ruins are improvisation, too;
if you choose to collapse or step away—
was it really unresolvable?
Are you lonely when you improvise away?
I expected to snap ideas; roll about in
action photos, Balanchine leaps, high Rockette kicks,
everything a showcase except the private, relentless
pilgrimage from shoulder to elbow to wrist,
her Ovidian arms becoming your shelf—
sharing weight in inconstant space.
The visual element immediately makes itself known
but you are also choreographical creatures
entering offbeat on the beat, so fast about anticipation—
maybe the geometry of the floor is off—
If she does not ditch the lift, but curls in instead,
I think she is saying, figure me out
quickly; I am your responsibility now,
she knows there will be no knife, no slip, no mistake
now that someone is caring for her.
Diane Mehta is the author of Happier Far: Essays and two poetry books: Tiny Extravaganzas and Forest with Castanets. She is a Civitella Ranieri, Bogliasco, and Yaddo fellow, and poet-in-residence at the New Chamber Ballet in New York City.
