(For Stephanie Kerr.)

You danced for me, although I never asked you too.

I still think that afternoon was extraordinary and made

our friendship what it is today, built on a foundation

of responsibility of thirty years rather than destroyed

in half a minute as I bumbled around,

fumbled, stupid boy like attempt to ask you out and to dance

for a month or two.

You have known suffering, ordeals in which

I can now only offer a long distance shoulder

but one that has always been there and as we were both outsiders

to a town that took us in, you stayed, I regretfully moved…

you to tears on the day I was having to leave, my shoulder

never forgot you.

The sparkling two years in which the play was the thing

the play, the drama of desire in which words were written, typed and mused

over whilst you taught me a valuable lesson never forgotten

and in which you have remained that constant friend.

Tragedy and age has not withered us, farce only made us closer,

a dance from one honoured I call sister and whose eyes never betrayed

to anybody but me.

The town remains, the ghost of that dance

locked forever in our heads,

laughed over as we turn 16 again and the smell of a plastic red rose

dowsed in cologne meant for another but the building block of our time.

For thirty years you, as with others, have remained in my head

and you know things about me that others cruelly guess at.

Not for us the withering of age used by a different dance,

just one that froze a moment in the right place.

 

Ian D. Hall 2014