Comment on this article

Angie’s Dance
by Ed Bennett

The music drifted from another room
uninteresting until
she joined her voice to it
without the words

lifting the melody, she stepped out
to the lilting beat that held her,
this merriment of voice and step
she meant to share.

She danced to my chair
then around it, all
playful spins and pirouettes
ending with a loud kiss
on my bald spot
before she danced away with
those graceful steps
I never knew to emulate.

And she conjured the moment
of that first dance,
my seventeen years a weight on me,
leaden feet unmindful of hers

until she kissed me
“for no reason”, she said,
except to see the shock
on a young tyro’s face.

Woman, you will always be sixteen,
smiling in the lightness
of your teasing dervish step,
the dancing image
of a middle aged mind
turned by a kiss
and a maiden’s reel.

Return to: