Longing for Dance, 6-10

 (the second five of a sequence of 20 10-line poems on the theme of dance)

6. 

‘Me and Bobby McGee,’ sang Janis

and I slid around the living-room floor

behind my broom, dancing like

no-one was watching (no-one was)

and chiming in with, ‘Freedom’s just

another word for nothing left to lose’ –

my moves gloriously free, because

no-one could see them, not even me –

and shouting out the words tuneless …

briefly escaping my young mother-wife-hood.

7.

Two of my Capricorn friends

(I have a lot of them; it must be

a thing, that Capricorns work

as friends with Scorpio: they’re

among my best friends … but we 

don’t have everything in common)

were professional belly-dancers

and teachers; but they could never 

teach me, though they tried – I don’t 

have the flexible midriff, the nimble feet.

8. 

‘Work,’ said the hymn, 

‘for the night is coming.’

I always heard it as, ‘Dance –

for the night is coming.’ 

When you come to the end

of your life, be that early

or late, maybe there’ll be

Heaven, maybe Hell, or simply 

nothing. No matter. I want to 

have danced while I was here.

9.

The dancing 

of fingers over keyboard

of words in my mind,

the music

of sounds and rhythms,

the play of ideas –

 

poetry compensates

for all my lack 

of dance,

of song.

10.

Gene Kelly in the rain;

Fred Astaire up walls

and across the ceiling;

Ginger Rogers with 

that smile, that hair;

Cyd Charisse with her

long, perfect legs;

Debbie Reynolds

and Mitzi Gaynor,

perky sweet …

(Number 9 is a textu.)

See also Poems 1-5,