Moonlight Dancing

Jim Larwill

Canadian Shield Chapbooks III
Text Box: MOONLIGHT DANCING I will not take you dancing except in the moonlight where the only band is the beating of our hearts. I will not take you dancing until every camp fire coal is flame silent and smoke caresses the wind. I will not take you dancing except when treble loons laugh and cry all night echoes making us vibrate. I will not take you dancing until a bullfrog base serenades the stars as they spin above our heads. I will not take you dancing except when our bodies like fire-flies pulse neon in lonely spruce boughs. Text Box: I will not take you dancing only if dew tickles grass bare feet as they play on a summer shore-line. I will not take you dancing until tender fingers are threading the waves of a warm sea of touches. I will not take you dancing until this lake turns calm and beaver tails slap attempts to distract our lust. I will not take you dancing but I am lost in my love and I know you too walk this welcome wilderness. I will not take you dancing except in passionate moments when worlds sing harmonious with our trembling toes. I will not take you dancing except in the moonlight where the only band is the howling of our hearts. Text Box: he imagines a box big as a coffin one that would hold a small child, a package filled with all he has given her and now she wants returned when he arrives at his parents he is relieved to see the package it is the size of a telephone book and as he touches it he can feel the short circuit of all their emails last two years printed Text Box: and he knows she has made copies sent them to him not out of love or hate but pure child-like innocence. He opens the package in the parking lot of the beer store puts the stack of paper under a case on the back seat goes to run his errands and to the meetings this day demands that night he flirts with a young woman one who points to the moon biggest she has ever seen but he becomes silent Text Box: MOONLIGHT FLING A pinwheel in night sky sparkles yellow, celebrating lonely solstice it smiles with cerulean anticipation of wind swept love. Shadows become fingers caressing a soft velvet sphere, it swells up moist with early morning dew as our sun rises on a new day. A foreground flower spreads open its petals; dreams cloudless horizons of budding hope, earth bound longing – touching indigo death. Text Box: MOONLIGHT GOODBYE "There are no truths, only stories." Simon Oritz and their love is now spilt warmth folded into silent sheets when a phone call from his father tells him there is a parcel rather large by post it has arrived from out of province so this man goes to pick it up knows it is from the one he loves and as he drives into town Text Box: takes her home drives alone back to his cabin in the hills and as he drinks he know all the words are lies but he can see truth in this carefully way she has coloured each section so he takes this bundle of pages places them in his bed under the covers so now he can sleep if not with memories then with everything that should have been.