Girl Gone Dancing

“I got music runnin' in my head
Makes me feel like a young bird flyin'
Cross my mind and layin' in my bed
Keeps me away from the thought of dyin'
Canta libre, Canta a la vida
de mi madre y mi padre...”
Neil Diamond

All day long, since they’d brought her back
from the hospice, she sat in wonder; her chair
set down in the garden. A passion for flowers
she’d ever had; observed how they bent
with the breeze. Leant away from her, as if
yearning to rid themselves of their tethers
of garden twine.

She saw blue-tits peck the pampas grass,
soon to fly away – beaks full of feathery booty
to line their nests. Noticed how light shifts...
how its plumes threw dancing shadows
on the larch-lap fence; a stately sarabande,
and then an unabashed, wild flamenco
as the wind rose; imagined she could even
hear the clack of castanets.

In her mind she trashed that chair of hers –
the ties that bind. Walked slow across
the chamomile lawn; at liberty, unhindered.
The sward – soft, forgiving underfoot, undid
the string from the foxgloves. Her reward –
their unfettered purple-splendored spikes;
they too, could realise their fantasies,
and be like she was, free to roam.

For the first, and the very last time,
only then, she understood what they meant
by ‘coming home’. Overhead, the sotto voce
of the leaves became her canta libre.
Her tambourine – the sweet susurrus
of the sycamores; as her gypsy-skirt
twirled and swirled...they mourned
the girl gone dancing.