On a recent trip, I had my first visit to the Bronx and the New York Botanical Gardens. I took a train, then a bus, from my YMCA room in Manhattan, ready to see the famous Chihuly exhibit.
I came across a poetry installation, the selection of winning entries juried by Jaqueline Woodson an American writer of books for teens and adolescents. While reading the poem “Night Club” by Essence Johnson, a Harlem Academy 7th grader, this line stopped me in my tracks:
“I am sober in the sun and drunkenly dancing through the night
because I am both
a work of art
and a dancing line”
I was immediately transported back to a hot spring night in Abita Springs, Louisiana. During my nearly 4 year’s time living in New Orleans, my boyfriend (Roy Geautreaux, isn’t that a rich Cajun name?!) and I were spending the night at one of his friend’s house across Lake Ponchatrain for a crawfish boil.
Something woke me up, and I noticed the moon reflecting in the property fishing pond. I walked out to the field, to bask in the moonlight. I was wearing a hand-me-down from my grandmother, my favorite flowy nightgown. The moon called me to dance, and I felt like a ballerina. I twirled and swayed, feeling the full moon fill me up. In that moment, everything was right with the world. I was swathed by the sense that everything was going to be okay.
Back to the present, standing there, in a different world and the hustle and bustle of NYC, I remembered the younger me. And I recaptured that feeling. I existed in the feeling of freedom and the divine feminine in the moon.. And I cozied back into the knowing that everything is going to be okay.
