The Bra Dance

Just a quick hello to Mike and Max in Torremolinos and to Suzi in Malaga. Stay there!

Once upon a time in golden days we had this rumbictious Poetry Group which consisted of Karen, Maurice, Suzi, Dick, Sarah, Spyros and Peta with the occasional visitor who generally only lasted one session. We used to feast on Yeats, Keats, Donne, Duffy, Whitman et al. We visited each others houses and there was always a theme: the weather, love, abandonment, the colour blue and each of us had to bring a poem to read out loud.
Loud was the word. Evenings used to start off quietly enough until someone made an irreverent utterance about the poet or the poem or even the reader. Spyros had the habit of missing a page and we used to get the most peculiar juxstaposition of two poems. His gluey Greek accent and his mispronounciation of words left us all on our backs with tears of laughter falling from our eyes.
Maurice read poetry like a master - each word a morsel of food thrown to us peasants. Suzi blinked and squinted at the words - too vain to wear glasses. The group was united by our love of poetry, the sound of poetry, the synathesia of poetry and, of course, no poetry evening would be complete without food and drink.
Maurice again was the master of all things culinary except that the objects presented were a few days old and we risked e Coli, salmonella and various others poisonings - his prescription for this was copious amounts of dubious South American alcohol. Out of this mayhem was born the Bra Dance - only ever performed by Karen and I.
It was not born from titillation - it was purely for us - joyous, spontaneous mischievious merriment flashing our multi-coloured hand-dyed bras at the moon. Karen, I will not have another partner for the Bra Dance - it is only for us - others don't get it - they add sexual connotations to it, are embarrassed by the thought of it and worried by its consequences.
So save the last Bra Dance for me.
What has happened to the poetry group? Karen went to France, Maurice died, Suzi wanders back and forth between Shazza and Norwich, Dick and Sarah (the only smoker) moved, Spyros and Peta are killing themselves with a 6am-2am business. I still shout Yeats out of the window at 2am when I can't sleep in the hope that his words drift into the unconscious minds of those asleep. Poetry is still my delight and always will be.
Karen I miss you more than you will ever know. I miss your prescence, your demeanour, your haughtiness, your tenacity, your incisive intellect, your laughter, your beauty, your strength, your fortitude, your curiosity, your endless search for the truth.
Petals

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Amy Lowell