Kinesphere
Life is the dancer, and you are the dance – Eckhart Tolle
The sad man appears
Tuesdays and Fridays
picks something small
like a card
and waits in line
for his turn.
No, ours;
it’s a dance after all.
Of sorts.
Of course.
I offer a carrier.
He politely declines.
Not quite bow and curtsy,
but it’s how we begin.
I twist, he side-steps,
I lunge and scan,
he lifts and packs.
We move in sync.
Eyes meet.
“How much?”
He mishears or claims to.
I repeat. E·nun·ci·ate.
It’s our thing.
We step in time.
Call and response:
exact change for glances,
(two kinds)
till receipts for smiles,
(two kinds)
and thank you
for the dance.
So kind. So kind.
Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct magazines and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears and Poetry Scotland, that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and (increasingly) next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.
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