My student Grace Anne is writing
elegant and precise poems about ballet
so I tell her I took ballet long ago
in a previous century and life
from a woman named Tessa Williams
who was stern but at the end of every class
affixed small gold stars to our hands,
and the rest of the day I tried to keep mine
from falling off.
In one recital, I wore an orange tutu,
whose color I did not like,
but it did have the sparkles caught
in the netting, which looked like the drops
of rain poised to slide down our black
and blue Buick’s windows
while my mom was driving
and Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”
was playing on the radio.
My mom was singing softly to herself
in the front seat, If you leave me now,
you take away the biggest part of me
which was what was actually happening
though no one was saying it
because my father was at home dying.
For another recital, we wore pale
yellow t-shirts with pictures of frogs.
This wasn’t what I’d imagined
a ballerina would look like,
but I did like frogs,
especially what they said in the darkness.
When Grace Anne comes over,
we drink tea from fancy teacups
that I think Tessa Williams would have
liked, and she reminds me of
pirouette and pas de deux and relevé
and what it felt like to stand behind
that black curtain in the wings
right before everyone sees you
out there in the lights.
I tell her I was a frog and show her
a picture, and we agree that I was cute
because I was with my wide smile
and my green barrettes but we both know
my laughter covers a failure
to be elegant and precise.
What I like about a frog
is how you don’t often see them,
but they fill the night for you and make it
a smaller thing you can sleep inside
and then suddenly sometimes they appear
and everyone is quiet and stares.
I looked up Tessa Williams and sent
Grace Anne her obituary.
She travelled the world, trained under
Miss Olga, a name I suddenly
could hear her saying
when she was mad at us for not doing
something right. I love when anything
comes back to me
from that time. There’s Tessa again,
rising from the years,
standing at the mirror in her slim leotard,
banging her stick into the floor.
Laura Cefalu dancing the part of Frog, 1975
Laura Read teaches at Spokane Falls Community College and in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University and writes poetry. While her poem is about a time she played the role of a frog, in fact, her relationship with frogs is just beginning.