Poetry: Leda was a dancer by John Yamrus

Leda was a dancer

i think

it was 1969

and we were sitting on

the floor in the front room of her house,

 

playing

records on the stereo.  

 

i remember

playing Steppenwolf

and Simon and Garfunkle.  

 

i remember

she had her shoes off

and was showing me her feet,

 

how they

were all messed up

(even at such a young age)

 

from

so many years

of standing en pointe

and she said she wasn’t any good

 

and would

never really get

anywhere at it because

she was too short, but she loved dancing

 

and nobody

was gonna see her feet, anyway.

 

at eighteen,

i thought i was a poet,

but i never read Herman Hesse

 

and only

knew Steppenwolf as

a rock band and it didn’t really matter,

 

 

because

there was Leda

who was right about being

too short to be great ballerina,

 

but

she was

young and beautiful

 

and had a

flower behind her right ear

 

and

she smelled like

just cut roses and fresh grass.

 

she had

real short red hair

and hung around with a

crowd who spent summers at the lake

 

and liked

to talk about their

new cars and all the money they had.  

 

i don’t know

why she went after me in the first place,

 

but, she did.  

 

maybe she

thought i was different...

 

which i was,

 

because i was

young and dumb and awkward

 

and when i

walked across a room, i could

feel my brain balanced on the top of my head

 

and it was a

challenge just getting from here to there,

 

but

i thought

i was different

and thought i was a poet

and maybe that’s what Leda saw.

 

because

Leda was a dancer and

deep down inside of her she

didn’t like the lake and she really

didn’t like talking about cars or money.

 

i only

knew her for

that one summer,

 

and

our “romance”

(such as it was) only

lasted a couple of weeks,

 

because

the play ended.

 

i

didn’t

tell you we were

in a play together, did i?  

 

it was

a lousy play and

i was a lousy actor and

 

it only

lasted a weekend

 

and

she sent me a

telegram on the opening night,

 

which

i thought

was the coolest

thing anyone ever did.

 

yeah,

Leda was a dancer

 

and

i was a poet

 

and

i finally did

get to read Steppenwolf.  

 

i thought the band was a whole lot better.

John Yamrus’s career spans more than 50 years as a working writer. He has published 35 books (29 volumes of poetry, 2 novels, 3 volumes of non-fiction and a children’s book). He has also had nearly 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. A book of his selected poems was just released in Albania, translated into that language by Fadil Bajraj, who is best known for his translations of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Ginsberg, Pound and others. A number of Yamrus’s books and poems are taught in college and university courses. His most recent book is Selected Poems: The Directors (Concrete Mist Press)