Day 473: The Dance

 

CK Williams makes a lot of important points here. Like how 'misbelieving' ourselves can lead us to misbelieving the world, which can so often be harsh, but more often 'lovely.'  There are instances in life which show us 'what we are', like this moment in poem, when the bystanders of a restaurant are transfixed by a couple dancing.

What are these moments for you? (And note - they are so often the moments of poetry, which the poet in  all of us hankers after).

The Dance - CK Williams

A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and
   somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,
but when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man
   she’s with get up to dance,
her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained
   but confident ardor athwart his shoulder,
drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and
   moving him with effortless grace
into the union she’s instantly established with the not at all
   rhythmically solid music in this second rate cafe,

that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some
   sad conjecture, seems to be allayed,
nothing that we’d ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be
   admired or be repentant for,
but something to which we’ve never adequately given credence,
which might have consoling implications about how we misbe-
   lieve ourselves, and so the world,
that world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which
   sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.