I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown. to slow down. Recently, my 73 year old father called to tell me how much fun he had at a local dance club.

I was envious.

He used to swim daily, but after health challenges, getting on a dance floor beneath

swirling lights among deep shadows is his preferred workout.

Physical benefits aside, I think he also likes the attention of younger people at his moves.

At weddings, families surround him and marvel.

Today's poem exquisitely examines the healing space of the dance floor,

where a purifying circle of joy awaits us.

Dancing at the Get Down by Cat Way.

There is a snowstorm outside and inside the floor is full of people and the bright

disco light twinkles surrounded by four smaller orbs like Jupiter and its moons.

Under its Galilean orbit its glitter cascade.

We are in outer space. The lights pulse blue and purple and silver.

And DJ Tasha is a nebula over our atmosphere.

We throw ourselves to the drums. our

atmosphere, and our fingers are sunrays, our laughter, the flashes of comets, it is Thursday.

And we are a living kaleidoscope folding into our Mondays and out again.

The man in red tights and harness hoist a tambourine. On the dance floor rings an unbearable call, you've got the love. And we

pray to the barrel drum strapped to the waist of the young man with a faded jeans. For a moment he is a

God and the echoes go deeper than June. There is a river on Mars chiseled with rain, cracked like a lip, like wanting hewn into the millennium.

There is a girl in an orange skirt who hikes it up to her knees and rolls her neck wildly like a hurricane, like monsoon season and wet and dry times.

...