Malika Booker’s poem She Speaks to Me in the Swan Room brought memories of youth, and questions about one’s feelings now, looking back, the losses and benefits of getting older. I have written about this before (What Have I Lost). Malika’s people had been fascinated by theatre, Shakespeare and actors. I enjoyed today’s remembering of my teenage (and later) enjoyment of dancing.

Dancing Still

Once upon a time
I danced.
Went to hops in local ballrooms and student union
Danced with boys there and by myself at home
quickstep, waltz, jive, twist, tango swing.
Let the rhythms catch my bones
pour into me
Muscles, tendons, ligaments
moved feet and arms without thought
knowing what to do.

Now I can watch the dancers,
Strictly, or Flatleys Irish heels
clicking stage floors, gliding reels.
From my chair toes twitch
lips lift smiling while blood pulses
neurons and axons in the brain again
knowing what to do.
Mind dances Still.

A Lord of the Dance video here https://youtu.be/1yPF7GeX0FQ?si=NoO0MqF8yBSgVD8G and many more on youtube.

GCP this afternoon brought a prompt ENVY which made for a great deal of good work being done from all present, as we wondered about it and its cousin, jealousy, the green eyed monster, the bitter ‘eat vinegar’ (吃醋 chicu from chinese), and all the ways we manage to reach appreciation kindness and gratitude. We talked about sibling rivalry, lovers, teenage angst, possessiveness, everyone had experience to bring, then writing to offer. I am so grateful for this group.

Instructions to Self

What you have is precious,
Value that right now.
No wasting, no spoiling,
Don’t let your greedy eyes
covet their possessions.
Don’t eye the grace they bring to the dance
with bitter self-pity,
as your feet fail to jump as high.

Look on that hair that curls
prettily around her face,
look at those long legs
that run so fast and sure
across the grass and stones of the road.

Look, let yourself like,
let looking bring pleasure
to the goodness in the heart of you
that beats with love beside the longing.
You have your own song to sing
into the waves of the world.
What you find is precious.

Love Detour

It seems that door is closing, turning from it,
hard wood pressure pushes, crumples dreams.
Look sideways, see another track to take.
A detour. Diversion seems a possibility.

Adventuring, a crack brings light.
Not door, just curtain to brush aside,
Forgetting dreams, awake to welcome
unknowns and fears and newness bright.

Curtains invite with twist and turn.
Dreams fade behind silk soft caress
of shantung, slithery brocades, crisp cotton.
Imagination wakes, untangles wooliness
in knots, rubs rough nubbly Harris tweeds.

Open doors, straight paths, won’t answer
needs for breaks and shades in exploration.
Nothing turns out as it seems in dreams.
Love instead those shady curtains, dark or light.
Welcome the diversion. Love detour.
Take the new road, ever bright.

At GCP we read A Salt Sky by Alberto Rios, a poem about stars at night. I remembered a night long ago.

Black Night

Walking out in darkness
I found I could not find
Anything.

Disoriented without sight
Limitless imagination
Sudden Fear.

Remember to breathe
Lungs know what to do
Deep Peace.

Blackness and wonder
Immense ocean of promise
Sudden Joy.

I returned from a great holiday and now have a bad cold. Photo from a thought provoking artwork “Made You Look” at the Talbot Rice Gallery that represents the loss of land through colonialism, and the struggle to imagine landscape and relationship with it and the soil.

Lost my mojo
Where’s it gone
Is it stuff or just I’m throng
Now so slow
who me you know
as mostly always
ready
where to go
today with coughs and sneezes
crap inside
along with grumps I cannot hide
and do not say I haven’t tried
because I do
and yet I look from inner mess
see the world in its distress
who needs mojo
Cry Grieve Witness

Bluebells drift low under the trees
don’t seem to need the sun
though spring has come they chooses low light,
carpet the leaf mould with every shade of blue
royal, grey, white, cobalt.
The earth floor feels like sky has come to earth.
When the breeze blows, stems bow,
petals quiver, showing their undersides
as if clouds had crossed the blue
or sky became a sea with swell of waves.

Wordsworth spoke of daffodils
and the memory of their dance
forever present to his solitude.
I recall the bluebell wood of childhood.
Forever young, forever peaceful,
forever present, full of possibility.

Being prompted by talk of liminal spaces, I remembered Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of Morphic Resonance, a theory proposing that memory is inherent in nature, with similar patterns influencing subsequent ones across time and space. My take on it below is from imagination, not his work.

Morphic Resonance

To see the world in a grain of sand,
to hear the sand is full of space,
to find unseen the atoms move
to touch the rock then feel its grace.

The mind of science looks at facts.
The technician learns and then he acts,
takes for granted the outer layer,
believes in what he tastes and sees.

The poet walks abroad in prayer,
knows the truth that physics tells
from realms in cosmos wide and free
to the forces and fields of frequency.

Look for the liminal in between
where resonance echoes far unseen.
Know in every physical form
a memory links. Magic is born.