Early Poems Xxi

EARLY POEMS XXI - JUVENILIA Dance With Me by Michael R. Burch (circa age 18) Dance with me to the fiddles’ plaintive harmonies. Enchantingly, each highstrung string, each yearning key, each a thread within the threnody, bids us, "Waltz!" then sets us free to wander, dancing aimlessly. Let us kiss beneath the stars as we slowly meet ... we'll part laughing gaily as we go to measure love’s arpeggios. Yes, dance with me, enticingly; press your lips to mine, then flee. The night is young, the stars are wild; embrace me now, my sweet, beguiled, and dance with me. The curtains are drawn, the stage is set —patterned all in grey and jet— where couples in like darkness met —careless airy silhouettes— to try love's timeless pirouettes. They, too, spun across the lawn to die in shadowy dark verdant. But dance with me. Sweet Merrilee, don't cry, I see the ironies of all the years within the moonlight on your tears, and every virgin has her fears ... So laugh with me unheedingly; love's gaiety is not for those who fail to heed the music`s flow, but it is ours. Now fade away like summer rain, then pirouette ... the dance of stars that waltz among night's meteors must be the dance we dance tonight. Then come again— like a sultry wind. Your slender body as you sway belies the ripeness of your age, for a woman's body burns tonight beneath your gown of virgin white— a woman's breasts now rise and fall in answer to an ancient call, and a woman's hips—soft, yet full— now gently at your garments pull. So dance with me, sweet Merrilee ... the music bids us, "Waltz!" Don't flee; let us kiss beneath the stars. Love's passing pains will leave no scars as we whirl beneath false moons and heed the fiddle’s plaintive tunes ... Oh, Merrilee, the curtains are drawn, the stage is set, we, too, are stars beyond night's depths. So dance with me. I distinctly remember writing this poem my freshman year in college, circa 1976-1977, after meeting George King, who taught the creative writing classes there. I would have been 18 when I started the poem, but it didn’t always cooperate and I seem to remember working on it the following year as well. Keywords/Tags: early poem, early poems, juvenilia, dance, love, romance, romantic, waltz, child, childhood, nostalgia, teen, teen love, teenage, teenager, puppy love