Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Pankey
Eric Pankey
The author of numerous collections of poetry, Eric Pankey's first collection For the New Year won the 1984 Walt Whitman Award...
More >
Want more poems?
Subscribe to our
Poem-A-Day emails.
FURTHER READING
Related Poems
Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
by Margaret Atwood
The Dancing
by Gerald Stern
The Study of Happiness
by Kenneth Koch
Sponsor a Poet Page | Add to Notebook | Email to Friend | Print

Study for Salome Dancing Before Herod

 
by Eric Pankey

In the movement toward disappearance, 
She is pulled by an undertow of ecstasy.
She wakes in a room where she never fell asleep.
A thousand starlings leaf-out a bare tree.
She wakes in a dusky, tenebrous zone.
Evening on the ridges and in the mountains,
But light still spills on the valley floor.
What transport brought her here?
The shape of gravity embodies a pear on the table.
Here time is the only sovereign.
She is like an arrow slipped from its quiver.









Copyright © 2010 by Eric Pankey. Used with permission of the author.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2013 by Academy of American Poets.