THE OLD RED DRESS:

The dress hangs in my dark wardrobe of memories & dreams,

Upon a floral coat-hanger, draped in lost schemes & red seams,

Sewn by a-now-long-gone, once-upon-a-time loving seamstress,

Of nimble fingers, deft with needle & a love of this rose-red dress.

Worn to a palace, Viennese ball & to the dance of an African queen,

Fabric soft as a feather & as scarlet as a ripe Colombian coffee bean,

It swirled over hips & glanced over mirrored polished foreign floor,

And set Earls  & Princes talking, as you walked out of echoing door.

Mama, you left this dress to me on your sad & inescapable leaving,

Now I run my own ageing fingers over its long-ago crimson weaving,

Now delicately faded of hue, softly transparent & time- agedly worn,

Gossamer sleeves fraying & as the petals of an old rose, tiredly torn.

I cannot bring myself to be rid of your now tattered old dress of red,

As I open the wardrobe doors I hear your waltz dancing in my head,

And your perfume dances & wafts, waltzing around my bedroom walls,

And in memories distance, I see you dancing in Vienna´s mirrored halls.

I bury my face, breathing in the old fashioned, old silken blood-red dream,

Tears dancing, dripping, darkening the fabric of the danced-on-hem´s seam,

I hang up your old red dress in the depths of my dark wardrobe´s quiet gloom,

And closing the secret doors on its old dancing past, I walked out of the room.