Discovering the Dance

  I was never one for dancing, always sat on the edge of the disco or waited for the Great Emancipation when the women would do the asking.
   Usually I was slurping down cheapo wine enough to fall over and be trodden on by couples who'd smooch off end of the evening after the Stones' 'Let's spend the night together'.....while I'd return to my digs to write that same self-pitying poem again and again.
   But I do remember the ceilidh with the woman who I went on to marry, above the sea on the creaking boards of the infamous half-pier, the sheer whirl and swirl of it ; the circles and spinning like some ancient Celtic pattern.
   I discovered in India that even a baldy, specky Welsh person in sandals and shorts could be a massive hit on Instagram, trying to copy the moves of a former winner of India's 'Strictly'.
   Sure I was like a fledgling flung early from the nest, but I'd left it all behind....the shyness, the awkwardness......a time-zone, a Continent away.
   And all without the aid of alcohol, just water-propelled like some diving sea-bird.
   I found my hands and arms could become sails and wings and, for an evening, floated and flew in a fantasy of foam and air.   


                                        WEDDING  DANCE
​
' I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible.' - Gandhi

The DJ plays
techno Hindi
as bride and groom
wander freely
taking partners
to the intoxicating dance -
hennaed hands link
and here you have
the ceilidh swing
the Bollywood moves
the awkward Western shuffle -
but the wildness
becomes everyone
as we are blown
about and into each other
from so many lands -
Kazakhstan, England, Cymru,
Greece, USA, Canada -
here in this movement
the winds of the world
join together as one -
clap as the couple
tumble walls, reach over seas -
everyone a droplet.