after Alex Katz’s “Dancer 3”
When I remember us, we are dancing,
stretched but bound, rind of the trees that grew us.
Stretched, we were bound to grow beyond those trees,
their limbs shorn, our braids fleeing skyward.
When shorn, our limbs and braids fled the sky.
We bowed in thanks for the bread of life without wine.
Bowed, we thanked bread for life, craved wine
and other bodies with mouths to open ours.
In different bodies, our mouths opened with
the same whispered questions, damnable doubts.
We whispered. The same question damned us to doubt—
was it holy, this wildfire surging through flesh?
It is all holy—wilderness, fire, flesh.
When I remember us, we are dancing.
–
Whitney Rio-Ross is the author of the chapbook Birthmarks (Wipf & Stock) and poetry editor for Fare Forward. Her writing has appeared in The Pinch, Stone Circle Review, River Heron Review, Susurrus, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Nashville, TN.