DANCE WITH ME DADDY?

She´d lie in bed & hear the old cranked gramophone playing,

On creeping down the stairs, she´d watch them softly swaying,

Daddy held mummy & danced her around with such tender love,

To romantic tunes, swirling off the walls & onto the ceilings above.

Then one day the angels came & danced her mummy off & far away,

The soft music stopped at night & along the walls it no longer swayed,

The halls fell silent & at night all alone, into her pillow, she quietly wept,

While listening to her daddy pacing the floors, now he never ever slept.

One night through her tears, she heard the swirling music playing again,

And she thought her mummy had returned to take away her teary pain,

But on peeping, saw it was just her daddy dancing with empty embrace,

With a tear running down his stubbly, lovely, but so sad & furrowed face.

Slowly she crept into the music-swirled room, but of her, he wasn’t aware,

She hesitated getting close, she twiddled her hair & she just stood & stared,

“Dance with me daddy?”, pleaded her tiny little voice, sounding lost & alarmed,

And daddy bent to his daughter & danced her to the moon in his aching arms.

He danced with his little daughter until his grief finally left & flew far away,

He never stopped & he danced her all the way through to her graduation day,

“Dance with me daddy?”, she asked him, dressed in lace, the day that she wed,

And happy in the arms of her daddy, she danced all night while the old man led.

Years flew by & with the old gramophone, she taught her children to dance,

She aged too, as swiftly old father time came knocking & the years advanced,

Her daddy grew old & grey before her eyes & in his final winter of frozen frost,

She realized, that all memories within his mind, had flown & were now finally lost.

“Dance with me daddy?”, she asked, cranking up the old familiar gramophone,

And she gently took her old daddy in her arms & danced him softly back home,

To that place in the past, where she was that tiny, lonely frightened little child,

Upon daddy´s face, distant memory danced together with the glimmer of his smile.