This Indian man is instructing us
about the ways of a native dance,
with illustrations and young people
regaled in their finest beaded clothing
and they sing and pound drums
and the dancers move in ways I have
never seen and the music is notes
 
I have never heard, like the sound 
creek water makes hitting stones under 
a distant crow. The man introduces 
a new dance and he calls the dancer 
by the wrong name and his young 
daughter laughs at him just exactly 
the way my daughter laughs at me. 
 
A million crows fly over the world
and if we look up we will see a million
silhouettes, each one as different
as Gene Kelly is to these dancers, 
but a daughter’s laugh, that,
that sting of wrath wrapped inside
the music of a child’s delight, I
think that’s the same sound 
no matter what dance you do,
no matter what creek you hear.

 

previously published in Galway Review