The Weaver

She makes the horizon

She weaves the clouds into the landscape, pulls down the dark and light grey threads of the sky to make a horizon.

Gone are the trees, the world, the sea, she is a creature of air, now giving birth to a sun that only comes out to hide.

She weaves new ecstatic lines over the black and pale words of a yesterday that rhyme with rhythm.

She leaps into the next lunar orgasm, legs lifted, arms aware and braced against the closest planet.

She leans against the moon breathing and breathless, lungs outpaced by the heart, by the beating stars.

Clothes fall over and off her lying on the sand, dusted with the remains of her galaxy, with the pressure of the fall and rest.

The pebbles that drip through her aching fingers line themselves up to be counted as part of the ground.

Feet twitch as the earth comes up to root her, just for a little while, before she leaves again for the sky.

J.D. Harms 2024

Note: Recently, I’ve joined an ecstatic dance community in my city. Words cannot express just how grateful I am to have found a place to move and breathe and be lifted, weekly, into transcendent experiences. I’m also so grateful for one particular friend without whom I might not have ever tried dancing. Before now, I certainly romanticized the dance. It’s an image that so many writers have worked with and into throughout the history of poetry.

Now that dance has a more real place in my life, has gone beyond a merely romantic idea, as part of a spiritual and physical path, that transcendence has somehow become more of a tangible thing (can I possibly make sense out of that statement…?). At any rate, desiring to write about dance, of course in a more metaphysical/surreal light, I went looking for an image to spark an ekphrastic piece.

I love this image. It’s a pretty good encapsulation of how I feel during and after an hour of practice.

I whirl part of some mystery I did not make or earn that seizes me each time I drown in your identity — Dorothy Livesay (spacing in the original is different)

My heartfelt thanks to Claire, Edward, and Dave for continuing to make space for me in their lovely publication.