The Crane Dance

The clew paying out through his fingers, a deftness that would bring him back to her, its softness the softness of skin, as if drawn from herself directly, the faint labial smell, guiding him up and out, as some dampness on the air might lead a stone-blind man to the light. Asterios dead for sure, his crumpled horn, his muzzle thick with blood, so at Delos they stopped, Theseus and the young Athenians, and stepped up to the "altar of horns" to dance a puzzle- dance, its moves unreadable except to those who'd walked the blank meanders of the labyrinth. And this was midday: a fierce sun, the blaze of their nakedness, the glitter of repetitions, a dazzle rising off the sea, the scents of pine and hyacinth. . . Well, things change: new passions, new threats, new fears. New consequences, too. Nowadays, we don't think much about Theseus, the Minotaur, Ariadne on the beach at Naxos, staring out at the coming years. But people still dance that dance: just common folk, those criss-cross steps that no one had to teach, at weddings and wakes, in bars or parks, as if hope and heart could meet, as if they might even now, somehow, dance themselves out of the dark.