Fish at the Dance    


You've walked from the gallery
where a bird in flight
materialized from the mind
of a peasant boy tending sheep,
featureless bronze buffed to high luster
sculpted into one long sweeping curve
whose equation he could not fathom,
and now you're swimming the depths
of his ocean, staring at blue-gray
mottled marble—
no tail, no fins, no scales,
no gills, no eyes—
headed for the stairway
where against the landing's wall
five salmon-skinned women
join hand-in-hand in dance, Matisse's circle
not quite closed, still room for Brancusi's
creature carved from stone,
celebration of becoming human
by first being fish.