I met a young woman who told me her story of physical abuse from her father and the escape that dance afforded her. This is the poem that came from that encounter.
On the Wing
The long hard body,
fists and heart beating with the fierceness of a trapped animal.
Sore to the bone.
The smile, hiding, tentative, wanting release.
Release into soft and healing feathered flight.
Release into movement,
where the true rhythms of the beating heart bring light and peace and beauty.
But always finding herself beating, fist-like, against the bones,
trying to escape the prison of the body.
Then somehow,from her true heart,
finding flight, soaring, beating gravity to the punch.
Escaping the bone-heavy world, to glide and soar,
to let the sky stroke her feathers, lighten her bones to tenacious bird-like strength.
No longer of just one world, but now of two, of earth and air.
A prisoner no more.
Able now to trade the heavy soreness of this world, for light and graceful soaring, free and clean.
To trade the beating in a heart, for strong and rhythmic movement in the air.
To leave the earth in one long, soaring flight, and land again,
to have her feathers stroked, with soft and loving touch.
Finally alive to her bones…
where now fight or flight are living choices, to be made on the wing.
