Dance

Moon dance,
you were not to blame.

Nor you,
lovely white moth.

But I saw you together.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 22, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Dance” first appeared in Alfred Kreymborg’s Mushrooms: A Book of Free Forms (John Marshall Co., 1916). In a review of the collection titled “A Staccato Poet,” published in Poetry vol. 9, no. 1 (October 1916), Harriet Monroe writes, “Even in his most serious moods [. . .] he keeps his light touch-and-go manner and his telegraphic, almost telescopic, style. His “free forms” are not always so good a fit for the serious as for the whimsical mood; their rhythms become as obvious in their way as certain familiar hymns are in theirs. But sometimes he does a thing worthy of that overused adjective, exquisite, like [the] wistful ‘Dance.’”