Cantus Cunctantus (song of being slow to act)
"I speak not this to make thee secure and negligent, but to cheer thee up."
—Robert Burton
If while life is slipping
and the pen and Calliope
are slipping and the word
is a glow-blue square
in darkened rooms
above murky streets—
If I with my sharp spoon
write naked, persistently
outside my purview
flinging my words on the page
scribbling slyly to myself:
Words are dancing, dancing.
Words are meant to dance,
Words are best so!
If I choose my verbs, my nouns,
my adverbs, prepositions, commands
outside authority's paid-for bricks—
Who shall say I am not
the happy enemy
in the house?
Diane Schenker is the author of Expert Terrain and the chapbook, Relation/Couch/Dreaming. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Rhino, Subtropics, Gargoyle, The Squaw Valley Review, Writers’ Bloc, SalonZine and VIA. She has written reviews for coldfrontmag.com and The Boxcar Poetry Review. Diane has also worked and taught in theater and directed opera. She wrote and staged Nannerl: A Speculative Morality, a staged inquiry into the life of Mozart’s older sister.