Dancing Feet

My friend Darlene treated me to wonderful gift today: she drove me into Bellevue for a pedicure. 

My feet were washed, pumiced, massaged and lotioned, my nails given a short, back and sides, emery-boarded, polished and buffed. 

As feet go, they looked amazing, and felt fantastic. 

As I was being primped and pampered, I thought about the places where these very serviceable and extremely reliable feet had walked:

The green hills of the Cotswolds, under the skirts of which I was born: the Welsh and Scottish uplands, the Swiss Alps, the Carpathian Mountsina, African Velt, Hawaiian rainforest, and Sinai Desert.

They have trudged, heavily through rain, and deep snow, plunged into streams, paddled in oceans, slipped down the banks of rivers, and tip-toed in and out of children’s bedrooms. They’ve been there for me, and apart from a spell in orthopaedic boot following a snapped tendon in my right ankle, they’ve never let me down. 

Above all, they have danced! The Lancers at speech days with school friends, The Dashing White Sergeant with sixth formers at the local public school, out-paced boyfriends at discos, accopanisd family members at parties and weddings, including my own, swayed and turned with Xhosa women in South Africa and with pulsed into sand woth Bedouin in Egypt. 

They once featured in a poem, about that experience:

Here am I, in the Sinai desert, with my dance troupe, at dawn, performing to the music of oud and drums. It is my fifty-first birthday. As I recall the magic of this day, I am reminded of my strength and my resilience and am full of laughter. I hope this comes through in the writing

A Work of Heart

To write this poem, I planted my feet, Strong, bare feet, 

Firmly, in the sand.

I raised my arms, then,

 Dropped them, as I was taught, 

To my shoulders.

Aligning my palms to the strengthening sun, I waited,

Alert, for the words

To drift, or bounce or slide Down,

Down

With the music.

I lifted my head and 

Listened, listening, For the deluge.

Quietly at first...

Trilling over my fingertips 

Snaking down my arms 

Shivering across my shoulders 

Thrumming through my breast 

Shimmying with my hips

Turning Turning Turning

Clapping with my hands 

Stamping with my feet -

The poem came! And

I DANCED.