Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind’s cage-door,
She’ll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
– From John Keats, Fancy, 1820
He quoted Keats as he led
what was to be a waltz
among articulate dancers
twirling and weaving
across the dusty wooden floor
Autumn’s first night dark and crisp
unfamiliar after the long days of summer
city lights glimmering on Lake Union
mild waves undulating to their own rhythm
pleasure boats bobbing in a gentle pas de deux
houseboats silent and awkward wallflowers
who never learned to dance.
“Ever let the Fancy roam;
Pleasure never is at home,” he recited
the cage doors of his mathematical engineer’s mind
flung open
excited his dance partner was a poet.
He lost the rhythm as he explained his love of the poem
learned years ago
how it reminds him that to touch pleasure is to break it
how he loves the Romantics
hasn’t read modern poetry.
The iambic lines
pulled him off the triple meter
our feet and arms akimbo in the dissonance –
Keats’ old-world words
the engineer’s long-dormant yearnings
the one-two-three one-two-three
calling me to let loose
wander and sway
roam under twinkling lights
pleasure never is at home.