Born to Dance the Blues

Her mother told her she was born to dance.
She said, in the womb her heart
tattooed her future steps
on a kind of fever chart,
a balletic horoscope of her every move.
The first time she heard the blues,
she slipped on her shoes,
pointed her toes and pirouetted out the door,
jazzed and jived to jukebox tunes
under summer skies and autumn moons,
slinking and slipping with trumpet slides,
joining bands on their tour bus rides
from city to city and town to town:
dancing the blues never got her down.

Kim M. Russell, 2017

Photo by Adam Littman Davis on Unsplash

 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Bits of Inspiration ~ Keep Dancing

Susie is our host and has decided that because we are swimming in negativity from Facebook posts to news outlets, we’re going to dance. Today’s challenge is to express dance through poetry. We can pick a photo, a quote, video – whatever inspires us to write a new poem. I love the quote from Martha Graham: “Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart” but I also love the black and white photo. I wrote the poem quite quickly, with Joni Mitchell and Billie Holliday in my head.

28 thoughts on “Born to Dance the Blues”

  11. Nice reading, nice writing Kim. I traveled with her, I feel she might get off that bus to stay when when her travels come to our Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

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