If there were only One Dance…

I traveled to a high mountain,
To meditate on the question,
“If there were only once dance,
What dance would it be?”
The answer did not come so easily.
I suffered a thirsty heat,
A sweating downpour,
A confused fog,
But then the answer came:

The dancer who hears the One Music,
Has only one dance.
The One Dance cannot be led
Because the music leads it.
The true dancer
Knows no time outside of Music;
Knows no life outside of Dance;
Knows no created thing
Outside of a unique way of movement.

Even the clouds dance out their message;
Trees sway to the music of the wind;
The choreography of birds
On the backdrop of the heavens show this.
Mustangs, too, dance free on the Great Basin.

As I pondered these thoughts,
I heard a beckoning sound of a bandoneon
Playing a tango ballad, as if were from a village below me.
The music so moved me that I danced alone.
I heard a primal, ancient beat,
And I recognized the clave-pulse holding all music together –
The heartbeat that still flows in the blood of Africa.
That day I glimpsed that
Indeed, time itself is Music,
And Music has no life, no meaning
Unless you and I are dancing together
The One Dance.

One day the whole planet will join us.


Mark Word
Salado, Texas
December 2009

Photo credit: http://www.tangoconfidential.com/