Swing \ Trimmed

Nancy:  My feet still know the moves, my mind hums the tunes, my senses replay the routine: lift the needle, flip the record, wind and go.

Swing

When I least expect it, the yammer

of news segues into one of those “best of”

features and I’m not sitting here

in a sagging cabin on the Bay of Fundy

but it’s 1944,45 something like that

and I’m sweating and swaying on the 2nd floor

of the old firehouse, so hot that the purple

ink stamped on the back of my hand

is smearing.  We didn’t air-condition July

in the forties.  The firemen put on

a dance, 25¢, every Friday night in July

and August, 78s and all the water you

could drink and good luck finding a partner,

three hours of maneuvering, or, if you were shy,

of slouching or twirling at the edges of the room.

Eventually the chief called last dance and finally

even the shy guys picked out their girls

and the old floor whispered under penny loafers

and the dirndl skirts and eyelet blouses melted

together and flowed down the stairs into the

night, breaking apart and drifting into the shadows

like a string of pearls.

Alan: Middle age can feel like adolescence inverted: the same disconnect of self and body, body and surroundings, except this time it’s all diminishment, all the way down.

Trimmed

The man in the mirror

looks to be in his fifties, older than he feels,

but there it is.  He reveals

bad teeth, mouth beyond lopsided,

responding affably to the barber’s small-talk;

and neck – much neck tapering to the suggestion of chins.

The man receives his modest trim,

a little off the ears, leave some to comb on top,

grateful for hair enough though gray;

and what are the kids getting these days?

“Mushrooms! mushrooms, mushrooms!”

And then: “Want one?”  A jest: a jape.

Ear-hair clipped, eyebrows tamed again,

the whisk and he is rising,

surprised and pleased that it is less

than expected: surprised to be pleased,

wondering at his small good fortune,

pocketing the three dollars change.

In the far high corner the sports channel

endlessly reveals people with impossible bodies

performing the impossible.  The man

is departing the mirror, or disappearing

into it, considering: next the bank, laundromat;

maybe, as reward, coffee with a little light lunch.