The wire wastebaskets sit askew 
where they were twirled off the janitor's hand
sometime last night as he made the rounds 
from studio to gym to offices and dressing-rooms. 

They steep in the stillness that barely ripples 
down the wall of mirrors, their tidy echoed lines 
of blond wood barres. Interiors full of haunted light  
recede toward infinity, looking sulky, empty, 
lonely for the sweaty Spandex dancers 
who fed them leap-and-kick from dawn to sundown. 
In the glass this morning I’m the ghost, 
arriviste, disturber of history. 

At this early hour the ceiling fans are still; sometimes 
they still spin when I step into the studio. At low speed, 
they've stirred darkness all night long 
because somebody didn't figure out the buttons 
(like many of our situations, fixable by knowing 
the hidden location of a tricky switch.) 

Unseen above the ceiling's chalky tiles, 
the big whole-plant AC system thrums, vibrating 
the building's skeleton. It's a sound that might stand in 
for the idling engines of a massive UFO, 
square blocks of it, whose robot pilot waits 
for passengers to board (that's us!) before 
we head out through night's fading tracery—
the dusty skein of stars—
toward the distant blink of Alpha Centauri. 

Ancient family lore suggests that planet's light 
won't support reflections; there are no mirrors there, 
no limpid ponds, no shiny walls or gleaming surfaces.  
All creatures must depend on one another to report 
truths that work their way out from deep inside.