BALLET LESSONS

The teenage girl, graceful and lovely,
leaps through the studio lobby,
then pauses, to whisper with a friend.

Confident, she pays no attention
to a man watching his daughter—
younger than the leaping girl—
stand at the barre en pointe,
in a class he hopes will one day
help her to leap through the lobbies
of her own passions and dreams.

This poem was probably written in 1997 – I didn’t put dates on my work back then – then extensively rewritten today (10/10/2025). In 1997 my daughter took ballet. Thirty years later I have granddaughters who have tried ballet, although it is not (yet?) a passion for any of them.

Information on purchasing my book – SLOW RIVERS: Poems from My Sixties – is available at josephneely.com. Please consider ordering SLOW RIVERS through your local bookstore (ISBN 979-8-218-43822-7). SLOW RIVERS is currently in-stock at Hidden Nook Booksellers in Grayling and also at a handful of other independent bookstores in Michigan. Shoot me an email for a list of stores at which SLOW RIVERS is usually in stock.: slowriverpoems@gmail.com.

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Joseph Neely, all rights to original material reserved.