Watching her neighbours happily dancing with their children sets Elise Partridge off on a sadder trail of thought about her own parents; but the poem ends positively with a conga! Partridge (1958 -2015) was born in Philadelphia and had degrees from Harvard and Cambridge Universities.
Much of her later, and creative, life was spent in Vancouver. The posthumous volume of her Collected Poems, The If Borderlands, has been published as a tribute by New York Review Books (NYRB) at £11.99.
WALTZING
I can see just so much
from my studio flat
through the slanting snow:
my neighbour sweeps his daughter
around their condo
in off-kilter, three-
quarter time: whisk,
promenade, slow dip –
she must be riding his toes –
while his wife whirls their son
to Benny Goodman,
or looping bluegrass fiddles.
~
The last time my parents waltzed:
their wedding day.
After she flung her violets,
he tossed a champagne flute.
“I hated him doing that.”
Wasn’t it exciting,
I asked once. She frowned.
“I wanted it over with.”
As they duck sparse confetti
in this gray shot, knowing how
it ended, I hold my breath.
~
My neighbour’s daughter claps
as they lurch right
again, by the rumpled
couch; her mother
can’t stop grinning.
The girl stumbles, her father
swoops her up to
the rafters, the son
swats a balloon.
They flick off the ceiling bulb,
conga out of sight
to their inaudible tune.
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