Nigel McLoughlin

Some Go Dancing

‘Some who go dancing through dark bogs are lost’ - Louis Mac Neice

There could be emeralds

topaz, amethysts in the sky

where the setting sun

makes a tiger’s eye

of the horizon.

The light sublimes

under night’s arced wing

like a jewelled shock

of hair that springs

from mountains.

Nights like these she comes

a fickle witch, her red hair down

drawing me to the hills

that lie outside the town

and takes me dancing.

I have danced with her

where the moon sings

impaled in branches, or drowns

in streams that dragon wing

the hillsides.

There are nights she leaves

me to find my own way home

and I have danced down mountains

through dark bogs, have never known

that I was lost.