Anne Harding Woodworth

Come, Let’s Stroll Across the Floor

Come to me in the silence of the night—from “Echo” by Christina Rossetti

When the light goes off in the hall,
my 1956 dictionary spreads itself wide open
and the no-longer-used Words come to life,
begin to chatter among themselves. They meet
in the living room for a Manhattan and a Lindy hop.
I usually join them. The Words have never minded

my presence. Last night I called out for Echo to come, too.
The Words were skeptical. The more the merrier, I told them.
Echo, sing. And as she’s never shy to respond,
she sang—her voice, that of a diva. The Words didn’t understand
her songs or her rhythms. They frowned. They pouted.
But soon she was singing their songs.

“Great Balls of Fire,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Blue Suede Shoes.”
“All I Have to Do Is Dream.” And we did the twist,
twisted, bopped, hand-jived, until we strolled.
We strolled across the floor. We sang, and we strolled,
all of us, the Words, Echo, me. Soon the Words
were calling out. “Echo, who am I?” asked Flat Top.

Echo reveled in the antique sounds of the Words,
which she knew because Echo knows everything: galoshes,
beatniks, hydramatic, hi-fi, icebox, cold war, polio, motel, threads,
jacks. She knew them all. The Words warmed to her.
Echo gave new meaning to Words. “You bristle, Flat Top,”
she said, and the Words smiled at the sound of her voice,

until in the silence of dawn they slipped softly back
to their tidy alphabetical order, such as things were
in the fifties—orderly, but only on the surface of a page.
I lay down for some shut-eye, humming “Love Me Tender.”
Echo went home, not to sleep, not to sing, not to speak,
but to wait, to wait, being the epitome of patience.

Copyright © 2018 by Anne Harding Woodworth

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of six books of poetry and four chapbooks. The Eyes Have It was published last month by Turning Point Books. An excerpt from her chapbook, The Last Gun, won the COG Poetry Award, judged by A. Van Jordan. It was subsequently animated at Cogswell Polytechnical College. The animation can be seen at www.cogzine.com/watch. Harding Woodworth is co-chair of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., where she lives.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review