Instant poem about older women dancing

The dancing body

I am a wrinkled apple
with an equator tied around
what used to be a waist.

Yet I am allowed to dance,
my darlings.
Turn away if you must.

My upper half is crumpled
but it works. Watch it stretch
and bend and flick and flow—
watch it go!

Down in the Southern Hemisphere
a committee intermittent
struggles to keep control.

A single pain commutes
from knee to arch of foot
to hip.

Warnings from the North Pole
travel slow in Morse code
and get diverted on the way.

The Southern body will not
bend or flip. It's all locked in
like old Gondwanaland.

It's not quite anarchy
here in the dancing body
more a quiet disagreement
with the plan.

~Rachel McAlpine 2021~

Older women dancing

Our dance group, the Crows Feet, has just finished a happy season of our 2021 show, Carmina Burana.

Crows Feet shows are an acquired taste. We have our admirers 🙂 Audiences do not come to critique our style or to bask in our glorious perfection. They come to share the joy of watching older women dancing—women of all shapes and sizes dancing our hearts out in a cleverly devised original show. Some of us (not me) are talented dancers. The rest of us do our best and as a collective, we have our magic moments. This year, music, mediaeval costumes, slides of mediaeval art and some showy lighting boosted a full-on energetic Breughelish event. Hits this year included tavern scenes and a final dance that quietly referenced the black plague—and thus Covid.

The only criteria for belonging are that you are over 35. you want to dance, and you will commit to attending weekly rehearsals. Ours are not classes that you dip in and out of like Pilates or Zumba, but rehearsals for a new show every year. However, no training or experience or audition is required. That’s why I’m allowed to be one of the group. And at 81, I am inevitably no longer at my best.

Today’s instant poem lays out the situation of an aging body that’s still dancing.

I hope I’ll find a way of dancing even when I’m in a hospice or a hospital bed. One part of my body will surely still be working almost to the end. Maybe I will dance with my thumbs … or my intestines.

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