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Even Old Horses Mist Dance
From that bandstand where dance beat drums
the rules pound out: keep moving
Riders on an emptying ballroom floor
clutching one another, holding themselves up
To the music which repeats circus marches
tin horns flailing out their squawking beat
Mildred dropped out early. I can’t she gasped
my ankles are killing me and she was right
There on the doorpost of her exit, the acronyms
for soul, for peace. Horace wiped a tear with
A cloth snatched from a passing table, then married
his secretary for whom dancing was an obscene word
But, silent spectators, we heard the word, pushed back
our chairs and shuffled oom-pa-pa to each dismal waltz
Or slow fox trot, each in his own catalog of steps
Here, a brother, Simmie caught by a bullet in the war
There, Rosie, grandchildren trailing like ducklings, lifting
her petticoats to haul a water bucket, hardly remembering
Grandpa Jack who had dropped out years ago with a
head injury sustained while circling with mystics
Held high on two men’s shoulders he smashed into a
door frame but they went on dancing until sunrise
Aunts, uncles, cousins too young to leave the floor
as we watch them disappear, horses on a merry go round
Rising and falling in the morning mist, another empty
saddle and another as tin horns bleat
And the night runs out of ink
© Johnmichael Simon
2007
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