Harold in Motion
Only in black-and-white
movies or the
Crow’s Nest in Santa Cruz
does the crowd form a
ring around the lead couple
but my
dad is spinning it
old-school, jitterbugging my
stepmom across the parquet.
A 73-year-old has no business
looking so
smooth, backbone lanked-out
like a fifties bopper,
head forward he scratches a couple
of chicken-steps,
kick-starts a Harley and
swoops an Elvis tune,
hands a pair of six-shooters
at his side he
flips his partner into a spin
like he’s handing her off to
someone
else who turns out to be himself.
Ask
a 73-year-old why he pumps weights and
jogs
a chocolate poodle down a beach while his
peers
melt into couches countrywide; he’ll say,
For
a group of absolute strangers who will
yell
him through fifty-year-old steps from an
Indiana
dance hall, then slap him on the back as he
retreats
to his table, Jailhouse Rock echoing in his ears.
Somewhere
in my near future I will pull a
breathless
redhead out of a dip and she’ll say,
Wow!
You sure can dance.
Oh
yeah? says I. You oughta see my old man.
Photo by MJV
No comments:
Post a Comment