There was a girl, a woman, handsome

So I’d thought

And young, in those days, by one’s rule of thumb

Her hair complexion carriage none but ordinary

As to have special courage lending to uniqueness

A grace perhaps she lacked to men whose eyes show

Passion

And was a slip, so that her body stood

A clothed bit stick, made barely shapely

Of clever mind, and hard to find a better,

A regent feature in a creature chattelled to

An ordinary office

With desk and chair, going nowhere,

But further down the road of years,

Gone almost without knowing

Each day went in the main like every day

The same and quietly by – and I – well I

Would watch her, she came in, her matchstick frame

Jigs jollily down the floor

Of mornings I’d call ‘Hi, and how are you

Today?”

I think her colour went a little pink because

I made that point to greet her by routine ; and was

No blush from any shy embarrassment

Aglow morelike that since her bust was flat, her features

Plain, her attributes not darling,

She had been seen and noted kindly just as if

Were a something of a queen

In some small casually rewarding way

And true - I saw her colour warm – and that had melted me

Admirer of her mind, to find she sweet acknowledged me

Now, how she spoke; made protest she would have

No children

Could not, would not, consent to tied maternity

Gave vent to her free spirit in a feminine revolt

Aroused by almost carnal distaste making

Her seeming cold, or born a something lacking

I heard that with her partner, he and she, an item

Of some longstanding,

Both loved, delighted, in bright energies of life,

And like a fey she gliding

Through life as on a craft coursing an even stream

And seldom riding tricky ups and downs, with flow

Enough - so to enliven

The ordinary, ordinary, dealings of the torpid days

One time I heard her saying how her nights were

Spent in dancing

Together they would kiss; a shower and dress,

Then to a club with music there, and of an evening

Make geometries on the dance-floor

And how she loved to dance!

To steal the blues away, throw all concern at once

Right out the window

The hours were evenings chasing painted rainbows

I got an image of a gentle, fragile, thing

Of compass distanced from this circlet of the world -

By choice repudiated -

The granite floors of politics and wars were not for dancing

Of these she took no heed, deliberately unthinking

Those problems their solutions were a case too hard

And too unkind to make one’s peace with and

Make sense of

The club a mind’s retreat, a sheltered grove, and

Quiet seat

In which lived dancing

And dancing with her man

It’s everything a modest mum might be

For other clever girls, but not for this, not she,

Who was for dancing absolutely all the way...

I found I grew more fond of her – her demureness

Made me feel here was

A delicate and waif thing, by thinking made to turn

Nonplussed away

Vehemently from every everyday anxiety, vicissitude,

And shun the common solaces repair that; family

In dancing she got lit-up, yet in spirit Cinderella

She, her Prince Charming, spilled among the heaping ash

Go lonely floating through a strait antagonistic world

On golden fields of air, made rarefied for dancing