A Short Dance with Duchenne
by
Deborah Robins
For forty full phases of the
moon, he knew God.
He wriggled happily like a
maggot child in a marsupial pouch,
And dreamed to a slow bass drum that made him
forget
His own quick
pulse....his separateness.
He could have
stayed forever there,
But they said
he was late;
That they
needed the bright white room
And the funny
little bed with only boards for mother's legs,
For other
women.
He did not like
the bitter sap that stung her soft walls and
Pushed him
away,
And he cried
for equilibrium lost.
Auf Wiedersehen
sweet belly.
For five short years,
he knew a carefree life.
He grew like a
plump peach and belonged to the race of children
Who ran and
swam and called over their shoulders to him.
He would have
stayed for longer but the spaces grew wider.
Angry faces
said, "Hurry up. We are always waiting for you."
He stumbled in
the races so that he didn't have to finish.
He grew sly and
found more tricks
That would save
the hot flush of his face.
The doctor
said, "Now hop....now skip...now get up from the floor...
That's fine....
That's very good". Was he blind?
But his mother
and father cried for days.
And there were
more games with doctors and less with friends.
None of them
asked him to dance.
His father sold
his bike and he felt his mother's body often in his bed.
Auf Wiedersehen
brief childhood.
When a hundred
yards seemed like a merciless wasteland, And a flight of stairs like a
mountain,
And his voice
grew hoarse from shouting at the backs
Of diminishing
youths..... he surrendered.
He was
strangely grateful for the gleaming wheels
Which catapulted
him back and forth.
And for a time,
it was grand to call over his shoulder to them!
But there were
still mountains...and medicines... and treatments...
And a
breathlessness without the dancing.
The hum of
motors invaded even his sleep
Until he was
too tired to wake...even for mother's crinkling eyes,
Even to return
his father's taunts,
Which were the leather scented upholstery
Over a hard
board of love.
At nineteen, they buried my nephew
In a deep
belly, between two ninety-year-olds.
In the wind
whipped distance, I thought I saw a toddler with white hair,
Thrusting his
hips oddly and writhing in pleasure to phantom strains.
Auf
Wiedersehen Duchenne
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