Mirror and Dance

She stands with her hands lightly linked on her belly
and everything around her is brown and white.
The wooden table and the tall mirror, the white wall
and the floor boards, everything but she, in pink
and black, leotard and tights, tapshoes and ponytail.
She looks at her own eyes the way we all do when
we want some answer, some oracle for ourselves
and wait for it to come like an annointing or curse
out of our eyes or the pores of our skin. We want
to stare ourselves down and know the truth
by the way we look away, or keep looking.
Isabel is looking like that and probably getting less
than she's asking, but I see the way that my own
thoughtfullness as a father, the love that heard
her say she wanted to dance and found the dancers,
I see that it isn't in the mirror.
She is the dancer before the dance, the dance
before the dance. Not the dance the father made,
not the dance he cleared a floor for. She isn't
the girl that might dance. She's the dance that may
happen and she's looking for the dance in her eyes.
I'm the darkness around the dance, around the light,
around the girl who dances for she who dances.