The routines ‘d gotten old by then

he said to me, all those steps one had to remember

were things to be forgotten, transcended.

They were not the dance itself —nor the music,

the beautiful spill of blue neon along a sweeping line

her shoulder turned, the neck, the side of her face.

The enormity of simply saying her name again.

Yes, even the Abstract Expressionists learned to draw

in the tradition or from out of it, representation, the real.

But what I meant to tell you about was something noticed

only in aftermath, wreckage and remnant scattered.

Once everything that mattered is forgotten about

and there is an amber silence to the next morning

—even if only in your memory. It is about dancing to that.