Samba

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 0

by Susan Donnelly

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Also by Susan Donnelly:
The Third-Prize Photograph (2000)
Harpo (1999)

I think it's a samba
they're playing in the prom tent,
as I watch from the lilac bushes
at the edge of the quad.
My feet start to move
experimentally, testing
the rhythm. Samba?
Or rumba? Latin, anyway.
Not that the prom kids care.
They're just swing dancing,
pulling each other around.
Here's where I saw the comet
after my father died. A blur,
like one of those whirled-out gowns.
I wouldn't be young, that's for sure,
tense and radiant, pinning on flowers.
But am I pathetic, or mad -- alone in the dark,
growing older, doing the samba?
It doesn't feel so. On his honeymoon cruise
my father was named by the bandleader
"the perfect samba type." A family joke,
but maybe he was, at that:
not tall, dark-haired, taking on weight
with age and responsibility. Just fit,
perhaps, for the samba,
its dip and lowslung
jump-slide forward
then back, that I practice now
into the scratchy lilac,
marking the soft soil.

Susan Donnelly is the author of Eve Names the Animals (1985) and The Ether Dome (2000).