Sometimes

Sometimes I See You Dancing

 Sometimes I see you dancing. 

Your arms are strong and hold

me up.  I would have 

fallen without you, tumbled down

like a doll flung away. 

Sometimes I see your strong

walk. You were my bear in the 

warm summer of my 27th year. 

You are still playing

music in my old age.

Sometimes I see you

dancing

in the night, 

in the rain. 

Our 

song, 

floats away

like smoke

in the air that

I breathe. 

Caroline Shank 

5.22.21

Jonathan Moya - Interesting  how this poem uses the familiar tropes of romance to create a memory poem that is both sentimental and heartbreaking. Like how the doll simile acts both as a bridge to the second stanza and as a transition from the joys and heartaches of childhood to adulthood.  It becomes a better poem as a result- one not of lost childhood dreams but adult ones crushed also.  Without that simile the rest that follows would be just a bad melodrama retold. With it it’s becomes everyone’s dream retold and broken, the time loop from childhood innocence to disillusioned adult that becomes every woman’s dance of life, 

Also I like how the bear imagery of the second stanza  both embraces and crushes setting  up the poignancy and tragedy  of the poems final lines. 

Even though the poem ends with a familiar cliche of memory as smoke it works.  The rest of the poem with is aching familiarity and double dance of ambiguity between child and adult memories that linger ever on make it the only perfect choice.

Liked this poem a lot more than my poetic sense of craft told me I should.  Ultimately it’s that display of craft in imagery and precision and simplicity of metaphor and language that won me over to its deeper and better elements. 17 minutes ago   x rate: , ,