We grow, doing less, and we are bigger

doing less—we follow our noses here,

 

to go there, to a time when we twirled

our beliefs in our fingers and raised our

 

curled hands—elbow, palm, unfurl—

to the clouds. If faith yanks your fingers,

 

faith, the impatient child who thrashes

in the mouth of the tiger, the audience

 

can see him from two thousand years

away. They taught us to make flowers

 

and half-flowers, and double flowers,

and tak, our feet answered, and doom,

 

doom, doom, doom. The dancers were

heavy as sound and swift as bells,

 

and when their bodies snaked stars

on the marley, we wanted to be birds

 

or warriors of air—a little more

vertical, with accents in our triangular

 

hips to punctuate the hush of our ribs,

when they melted through their cage.