Source: #walking 4
For a dancer
Loss and friendship
I sat with some people I wouldn’t call friends
We’re about the same age and share certain things
Like being born after the second world war.
They used that odd phrase “back in the day”
And talked of losses like Hendricks, Morrison
And Janis Joplin with a degree of familiarity
That doesn’t fit with me and leaves me uneasy,
The losses in my life are of a different kind.
Mo danced her last dance at the New Moon Club
She was pregnant and made the decision
To save the child growing and alive inside of her.
For a brief hour time seemed to have stood still
As if all the horror of her reality had been taken away.
That night Mo tired quickly and then she was gone
The virulence of the cancer soon took her away
But she’d made sure that the baby lived on.
You all came back to stand at her funeral
To remember the days of the brief life
We shared and afterwards we played
The old songs and John played guitar
And I sat and watched you grieve for Mo
Grieving for the loss of a time, and those days.
And one by one you fell asleep flat out on the floor
And I knew in the morning you too would be gone.
Published in Uncertain Times 2016 ©RobCullen