4 Am Ballet
by Odin Roark

Hot,
humid,
New York summer,
industrial commerce 24/7.

Textile scents of humid wool,
acerbic edge of chemical dyes,
permeating wood and air,
thick oily lubricants,
layered in basement enslavement,
shout forth to be heard.

Drawing on all he has…

The hard working dreamer,
of agile body,
holds forth,
awaiting his nightly concession,
his arabesque of glee,
the break.

2 AM

The precious pause for moonlight’s silver cast,
thrusting its presence through
the grime of floor to ceiling factory windows,
refracting off polished metal frames,
arcing visual life across paint-chipped radiators,
curling down over his labor station of stitch
seam,
baste,
and hem,
continuing across planked surface,
his rough hewn dance surface,
awaiting…

From floors below
dissonant seduction begins,
fabricating machines coming alive,
rhythmic noise,
production’s persistent chaos of movement,
changing its accelerated pace
into an allegro’s process,
returning to a scherzo finish,
all imaginative sounds
dismissed by others as noise,
even as he hears their musical magic.

Crescendo of background rumble
joins circular rises and falls,
creaking gears kissing,
turning belts lathering,
pistons rising,
falling,
pounding a velvet energy upward,
relaying creation’s echo
to his imagination waiting above.

Gracefully,
in slow motion,
he moves about the floor,
contorting his fluid body
like the bowed bristles of an artist’s brush,
bending life’s colors through pain
and its discovery of pleasure.

Break over…

Graveyard shifts drag on,
labor’s drudgery inflicting
the vapid body exhausted
by morning’s sunrise.

Squinting at daylight
yet infused by his Spartan workout
rendering fantasized dreams real
he forgets lifting rolled-bunting weight,
his aching arms of no-questions-asked effort
hanging limp beside legs of discovered steel,
now mere precarious stilts.

Still…

These gifts of support
beneath a sunrise-smile
lift him home with strides of exalted joy,
his weary bed ever-welcoming.