Yesterday Mish (Michelle) from dVerse Poets Pub encouraged us to step forth with a spring in our step in the name of Dance.

I am delighted to resurrect the poem below, which I wrote in 2017 for inspirational 5-Rhythms dance teacher Angela Griffiths.

Had a movingly great time dancing at the 'Patterns with Presence' workshop, with Angela Griffiths and friends on Sunday 14 May, at London School of Capoeira, Finsbury Park - and wrote this:


Patterns with Presence – expanding and contracting

(with love to all who danced that day!)

They shrouded the mirror,
as if the only reflection
was to be in another's eyes;

They mantled the shrine
with the golden cloth of generosity,
roses, hearts, the slow expansion
and contraction of a heartbeat,
a litany of opposites, of word play...
all these they laid upon it.

The walls were pure white. Behind the frosted panes, 
a vineyard of aspiration, a tangle of rooftops
and high-rise lebensraum.

They opened the shutters wide
and beyond, framing the attic windows, the elder tree
still bore the heady musk of promise,
the whisper of passion on the breeze,
the soft, embodied confidence
of vegetation in its springtime,
burgeoning towards culmination...
ribboning home to the 
centre of the labyrinth.

© Kathy Labrum McVittie  14 May 2017