Dancing

Mama, see, see! The bright salmon moon
is leaping high in the sky – and soon
All my friends will be dancing

Mama, I’ve put on my dancing shoes
Which long to sparkle through the music’s hues
Like my feet, they’re keen to go dancing !

Mama, you may think I’m still too small
But I’m old enough to hear the music call
So don’t stop me going out dancing.

Mama, please, don’t smother me so tight
But let me go honour this magical night
With my feet and their happiest dancing

This was the first poem I produced in response to a picture by Rick Mobbs – I wrote it without the picture in front of me, and realised, on seeing the picture again, that it didn’t really fit. So I produced another poem, which is more closely linked to Rick’s picture, and posted it yesterday with the picture. But I didn’t want to lose this poem, which I thought was rather fun, so here it is in a post of its own.

Dancing – a ghazal

Life’s music may set our arms mourning or our feet dancing
And yet whatever its melody, we are always dancing

A bright lightning flashes between the minds and hearts
Of a man and the desirable woman he espies dancing

Some may baulk, finding dancing too spontaneous or sensuous
Yet who can live freely who is hesitant when he tries dancing?

Revelling in compatibility and caressed with compliments,
Lovers smile at each other, their bright eyes dancing.

Some spin webs to trap their lovers and bind them close
Yet love is starved by conversations that are merely lies dancing.

Love has a power to give our fleeting lives
The brilliant beauty of butterflies dancing

Some walk the journey of their life, others run or crawl.
Happiest those whose words sing, who spend their lives dancing.

This is my first attempt at a ghazal, prompted by totallyoptionalprompts, on whose site you can find links to guidance on this form, and will soon be able to find examples by other poets. It’s a challenging form and I’ve not quite got the hang of it yet!

Edit – I’ve just been reading more about the Ghazal (HT to Brad) and have changed the last line, which used to be: “But the wise and happy travel through their lives, dancing”.

Reception

Take your partners for an introduction…
Step forward – offer a hand,
If a dancer proffers a cheek
Then kiss it. Take their rhythm
Once or twice, left or right
Who leads, who follows
In this social dance?

Smiling, exchanging cards,
One moment joining a group,
Then turning away, forming
The figures of an unknown dance.

Some dance tango, some the waltz
Some demand, some offer, some hide
Behind a veil of bland neutrality
Through the dance we learn each other’s ways
Though always wondering how each stranger
Dances when they’re alone.

Through the crowd the patient waiters glide 
In magical white jackets they are
Invisible behind their laden trays.
I wonder what they think of the dance
Which they punctuate, but do not participate?

Formality and friendliness
Faces and hands. Each dancer
Treads a different path through our dance
Each interaction shaping its own pattern
Tracking paths on the sumptuous carpet

(Sometimes, overwhelmed, I escape the crowd to rest my feet from the endless dance. In the privacy of the bathrooms I check to make sure that I have not lost my soul in the whirling dance of faces.)

And then returning, swept back into the dance
A new partner, and another, and onwards I dance
But the quirks of my steps show
I hear my own music, always, in my mind
As I dance with different partners, my steps change
But it is always me who is dancing.

Dance like there’s no-one watching…

Couldn’t resist posting this image of Calvin and Hobbes – I just love how it captures the sheer bliss of being utterly immersed in music and dance! Being able to be this spontaneous and unselfconscious is such a gift…

Click here to see the whole cartoon and more like it at gocomics.com