She’s dancing to a song you can’t hear,

to inner signals rather than noise.

They give such pure direction,

for once there is an only way.

She’s not listening. Something’s arising:

a thought that has to be kept moving,

a place in herself that was once so full.

You think you know her by that gesture,

the flick and twist of her hand as it lifts

to catch at her nape as her head tips sideways

but this is routine – a move perfected

while she was waiting, long and quietly,

for someone to let her in.

There followed the summer of dancing

out in the dark beyond the last houses

among the sneaking holly and dogwood

in a breezeblock creosote pre-fab temple,

by day a world of jumble and cordial,

by night a heaven of line and ring.

The look on her face is filling the room.

Someone else would describe it as joyful

only to you it is space she is taking

and you will never have seen her so clearly,

so within, she forgets herself as seen.

She is pure direction, she is line and ring.