THE DANCE

I see her dance beside the hotel’s swimming pool.
A fitness instructor shrieks out commands.
A stocky fellow on a rickety stool
nurses his whisky and tries to avert his glance.

‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’

The bar is teeming with patrons. An overstressed
barman hacks vehemently at lemons and limes.
I can make out her parents. Mother is dressed
for dinner, father engrossed in ‘The Financial Times’.

Engrossed in their aloofness, used to tidal waves
of pitying stares, deafening whispers and sighs,
forced to perform their own practiced moves,
choreographed despair, crafted resilience.

She is in her element, docile and content,
Wrapped up in music, mellowed in the balmy haze;
She’d leap into the sunshine but for the stocky gent
who keeps her pinned to the ground with his sorrowful gaze.