The Ballet Dancer with An Iron Sword  

Please don’t break our hearts, that sacred space where within its sanctum we store the glories of treasured memories, and legend is given its bubbling birthing point.

Each one a treasured memory, each act, tabulated and filed away so special that even when we simply reflect about one in particular, it can’t survive alive alone for all those other sheer majestic moments of artistry that have to be recalled one by one. 

The more sharing they receive the more fabulous they become. 

Every recall takes us back to exactly where each precious moment of every suspense filled act was begat, retold repeatedly. It’s such a comfort and a relief – a belief really in that truth that anything we aspire to achieve, then determined, we set our minds to and follow through by carrying out the part required of us, where we’ll find, Tigers tried and trusted flag of black and red with black cap and shoes, being hoisted aloft, a replica of which can  be worn by each of us though not nearly as well as he did. But each, inspired by the sheer mastery of his dedication and his skill we’d do the best to be our best and we’d hold the non-judgmental view we’d probably trip along the way and fall as well. Yet we’d hold the hope that no one looking on would be coldhearted enough and be the first to cast their stone ready to dethrone a dreamer, who like their beloved mentor the flag bearer had merely tried at all times to do and give his best. Unlike the Rainbow, high above, peering down, falls in love with our ordinariness of us. Poor-thing, it tripped and fell from its atmospheric lauded height when it dared to leave the precincts of its lonely station high above. Surely, with all the gifts we had received the onus would be on us, we simple ordinary folk who all secretly within aspire to be god or goddess for one fraction of an imaginary moment. 

As a chorus we can ordinarily agree. Yay, Tiger Man, thanks for coming down and showing all of us the worth of all the hard work, that goes on, day and after day into the night, beyond the imaginings of we envious fans that go toward making each every one of us a future standard flag bearer if we were to become so inclined, that we may each, one day, have the coordinated capacity of brain and muscle to majestically strike with an iron club shaft, a small elasticized centered, hard-arse-white-ball through time and space and have it landed as intended, where the waiting thrall, of a silent throng its thunderous applause a momentary pause in time away, as if our human survival was itself, dependent on its precision-point arrival. 

Tiger Man, when we see your flag of red and black unfurled across those woven manicured waves of green lawn, we smile within to know you’re loose again, around the course on fire – so beware! 

Time it appears has caught the seams of our improbable dream, crown, and gown and so our plea to this real man of steel, “Don’t make our dream become like everything in life itself and turn our once in a lifetime sip of nectar of one man’s incredible endeavor into what we had already seen unfolding but didn’t quite dare to believe.” It wasn’t his fault at all, that we all grew old and tired, growing white snow on our rooftops, where before we all had thatches atop our crowns that made us all so youth fully proud and pugnacious. But now the winds of time have blown, sown, and turned most of us bald, buckled and bent.

Every one of us as we watched the unfair dreams he’d carried aloft for us that, in time, got too heavy even for him, the prowling Tiger. And as in life, the cubs behind us, grow rest-less, no longer accepting the bits ‘n’ pieces of the hunt. Wanting as had the Tiger the glitz and glam of super stardom. Growing stronger and stronger by the hour – elite! In the shadow of our own denial, it was our fault, Tiger, you were indeed the chosen, undisputed King. We failed you. 

You fulfilled your part admirably, we were just too blinded by the denial we each were in, with our anguished thoughts, shouting them-selves hoarse, “Is this really the beginning of the dimming of our Hero’s reign, has the image of each and every one of us Joe and Josie Bloggs that we projected onto the shoulders of this solitary individual called Tiger for so long, like robbers, we uninvitedly envied from you, some of that hero worship to save us from ourselves? Time and the Cubs had caught up to us, more agile and hungry for the hunt and we  didn’t want to believe that simple Truth! So, thanks Tiger for inviting all of us along, and for your sharing with us, this once in a Lifetime Memory.

Once there was this Ballet Dancer with an incredible grace and energy who pirouetted across the stage of our sunlit theatre. But now, I only hear drill-sergeants and the sounds of drumbeats and galloping horses.

RTR