Body Music

Body Music
   by Mark Word

I visit a milonga, 
just traveling through.
She is timid.  
Hardly ever speaks.

But so graceful.

I study her presence for a while,

Then catch her eyes.

She watches as I near

With rare scrutiny yet a smile.
She seems relieved that I speak
Only with a cabeceo, 
A handhold,
A four-fingered gesture
To the wooden way.

She is delayed in her dance,

Hesitant. . . at first. . . not at all

Connected to the music,
Yet connected to me,
I can feel her searching me.

We pause now between songs.

I say little and she only smiles.

Her eyes somehow haunt me, 

So set on the words of my lips.

We dance on...
I try to move only to the music,

The inner voice reminds us:
"No step without the music saying
Move!"

My thoughts in silence urge her,
"Let your soul hear the music's lead!"

We then start to truly dance,

And our communal breath is one,
Our thoughts seem to meld so suddenly.

She moves with the changes;

She intuits my next move

Through the music.

And I sense her too

Within the music's cue.

"That's amazing!" I gasp at song's end
As if I have forgotten to breathe.

We dance two more songs,

And the pulse transforms us.

Our bodies are the music.
We laugh like children

At tanda's end.

She breaks her silence.

At start, I cannot understand her

Dialect or is it perhaps my shock?
She says,

"I heard the music,

It was Body Music.

I listened better than ever before,

And I really heard the music."

From her nasal intonations,

I know now that she is deaf.

Music is in movement

And movement, in music.

Which came first is a mystery.

But whether through movement
Or sound, music remains the leader.






Photo Credit:
http://www.tattoogirl.us/girl-full-body-tattoo.html