Tap Dancing to Charlotte

No, I don't play and that isn't my handbag back there. Chris in the Charlotte studio of Actors Scene Unseen last month. Photograph by James Vita.



Tap Dancing to Charlotte

The shoe-repairer taps on heel-savers
front and back on my Cole-Haan loafers,
now I can tap-dance my way to Charlotte
for the opening of my musical on "Jack."

In the airport, a handicapped lady taps
the floor with her black cane like a doc
with a stethoscope, a blind man uses white
stick to probe the air with a thermometer.

A dust bunny dances across the mosaic floor
then a maintenance man taps it into a dustpan.
And there's a dandelion parasol cozying up to me,
brushing against me like a cat, then gets caught

in the updraft of the ceiling fans, rising higher higher,
and my mind is going with it, soaring toward the heavens:
absolutely no upper limit, nothing for me to do except
keep dancing, keep moving, never stop my feet dancing.

Christopher T. George