Slow Dance   
      
First date you declare  I don’t dance.
So no awkward dancing bear shuffle
to some power ballad at ‘dos‘.
But come November my own stipulation -
each Saturday the Strictly glitter ball will
illuminate  a sullen autumn night.
Your commentary: 'No heel leads, nice fleckerl...'
chafes my enjoyment,
yet inexplicably tallies with the judges.
Turns out your parents  were taught ballroom
by Frank and Peggy Spencer .


Frank and Peggy Spencer
 
A boy with a talent for detail,
you grasped the theory of foxtrot and tango
readily as the outside edge, offside rule.
Later would shed jeans and leather jacket
to don threads and attend diner-dances,
occasionally partnering your mum
when dad had danced his fill.
But I know better than to ask for a turn
around our living room.
 
Instead am invited to join you in a menage
with your first love, motorcycling,
where you will teach me to pillion-perch.
First ride , as HGVs and buses
pass like dinosaurs, I white-knuckle grip
onto the bargain struck with myself:
Just this once. Shut my eyes and trust
physics to deliver me at each bend.
Yet there is point on a rural road
when my fear is suddenly taken by the wind.
 
So, whilst friends may shamble
through ‘their song’, this is our dance,
to the bike’s raucous soundtrack.
At times a wild quick step
with a whoop at every turn,
at others, an audacious waltz that
slaloms past stationary traffic at lights,
or pulled up at a railway crossing
the idling engine croons,
as you  settle back against
me in slow dance intimacy.
 
Fiona Sinclair

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Fiona Sinclair  would be pleased to hear them