Lightning's Dance Floor
by Ronald Wardall

REGULAR VISITS

There is something in him still
                        that will sometimes not wait for morning,
                                    but go out under that
                                                                        softening of the sky before first light,
                        not with any illusion of purpose,
                                                                                    but for the joy
            of walking down the rain-blackened, knife-streaked streets turning
                                    pale silver and final as a lover’s dead face,

going up the dim steps, steeper now in memory, the corridor tipping
                                                            like a ship, the angles sharp as a paper cut,
            to a room which, even with flowered plants on the sill,
                        remained scarred as an old tin plate, a room painful
                                    and sudden as a fork in the eye,
                                                to remind himself
                        he never took it entirely seriously while he was there,
                                                                        a weigh station,

he would get through by traveling
                        even lighter than he knew.
                                                                        They touched,
            but as two who were pausing on a journey
                                    they sensed would not end in that tiny room
                                                and, though with little idea of who they were,
            they had a kind of will for happiness
                                                            he would not know again.

                                                                      There are places
that are good like the sea,
                        good to know
                                                for their moments of grace,
                                    good to get through and take away too
                                                as part of a growing root system, a humility
            out of failure, a reminder of his need to be near
                        light on water