Produced by Dennis Camire

This week’s poem is by Marcia Brown of Cape Elizabeth. Her most recent book is “When We Invented Water,” published by Moon Pie Press.

 

Traffic Dance

By Marcia Brown

 

At that intersection where eighteen lanes of traffic slow, stop

And flow again over the bridge and into the city, or

Out to the mall, where the light will never change and we all

Wait and wait and wait to go wherever it is we’re suddenly

Desperate to go — there she is — on the curb: wild uncombed

Mane, mashup of strappy tops crisscrossed

With earbud wires, spandex tights, and running shoes — jigging

Her strange St. Vitus dance: chin-jut, head-bob, shoulders

Pulsing time to a hammering mad music only she can hear,

Forced by the lights to stop, she can’t stop, is a dervish

Dancer, funky chicken elbow flap, a fierce Mick Jagger tilted strut,

Booty-shaking dive down to the sidewalk, scissor-

Legged leap back up, unfazed to be what one might call

A public spectacle, a wanton, free, Mad Hatter’s Futterwacken

March to her own drummer — what, as I strum my fingers

On the wheel, unfurls in me a certain rue, the sting of envy.

 

Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu

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