… he commands the stage from the moment he looks over his shoulder:
a thousand sorrows are written on his face.

Anna Kisselgoff, “Villella Returns to ‘Water Mill,’ A Robbins
Meditation on Time,” The New York Times, 6.14.1990


                                                                   yellow grasses and that
silverflake fishscale blue shimmer of moonrise

sky starry as fireflies in August grain

 as rhinestones on ribbon as headlights in traffic’s watery roar

  moonlight spread with a butterknife   
yellow on a pewter plate
                                          yellow on a nippon plate
                 with lusterware glaze
                                               

Edward Villella danced Watermill that

 sultry seventies summer to desultory crowds it was

so    still

                                                         (he   barely  

moved)

         precise ephemeris

                                             of fruit moon
 

                                             Edward Villella danced Watermill this

summer oh God my mother said not again that

  awful thing

                                                                 the reviews said he was at 53

masterful

work of a master what he'd done young now

                                                                            stillness of one

                     who understood his moving
toward death

                                                                     (my father

                                             dead at 53)
 

Edward Villella I wanted to dance with you

                                                                                             perfect

broken bones and bony nose back hips metal plates
                                                                       

                     raw piercing intensity

                                                         you never not in pain

         the fruit's the moon
 

                                         orange grove focus of a mythic California

                 where a future I
 

will once have lived

                                                                     shucked gold forest snap
 

                     lamplighter glow semiprecious

                                                                                             gazing ball

  
in summerlovecrush with

                                             Edward Villella that
                                                                       

         first Watermill night

                                         driving home in your father's car past cornfields
                                                                                   

                     fruit moon sky rouged

                                                     and soundproof
 

we were nineteen

we saw

                                                                                         the sky change

                                         gray white silent wavy
                       

not knowing what it was

                                                     you my first love said you were leaving
 

                                                     radio captured static I kept thinking

if only I could hear a song to remind of this night forever

                                                                              witnessing for the first time

                                                                                             aurora borealis

an unexpected grisaille not rainbow luminescence

                                   static/electric

                                                            as Edward Villella in Watermill

we drifting

         past

                                 slow       motion         fields

thinking       the world    was

                                   
                                                     coming           

                                                                                         to an end