NPM 24

NPM 24

On the day you were born, flowers everywhere burst into bloom.

Daughter of Earth, sing your joyous songs and laugh your raucous laugh, today we celebrate.

How many times have we made this trip and danced this dance?

Why do we even count?

Let us just enjoy.

Sweet girl, you are everything pleasing and inviting to the senses.

You are comfort and decadence.

You walk in beauty and surround yourself with excellence.

Born under the stars of the bull, my stubborn, laughing, girl, rejoice! Your season has come.

NPM 17

NPM 17

My body remembers the movement to old music.

Dancing by the big window on the third floor at lunch.

I loaned you one of my skirts.

Turns and turns.

I taught you steps.

It feels so long ago those Friday evenings when it was just you and me.

Or those nighttime walks with the pups that turned into dance sessions and impromptu choreography.

I hear old songs and I’m taken back to rehearsals with the girls.

Five, six, seven, eight.

Not a one, two, three, four.

It’s a kick, ball-change, followed by a turn clap clap.

We made notes on the paper table cloth as we ate crepes and drank coffee.

A group will enter here, she’ll have a solo there, everyone will come together in the chorus.

Do you remember the one where we jumped off the stage?

Or how about the one where we moved like skeletons?

I loved the one where I made you tutus and I can’t forget the one where I made you wings.

Sometimes I remember the one where we all cried. Oh, there were a few of those.

And sometimes the songs and movements just blend into a dance that has spanned decades.

It never ends, just goes on and on, song after song.

NPM 15

NPM 15

Step by step.

Slow, deliberate movements.

Arms outstretched, she pulls new life into being.

Evergreen, Persephone, the goddess always in bloom.

The snow melts under her feet as she banishes winter and wakes the earth from her slumber.

Gaea, arise, you are reborn ageless, draped in verdant beauty.

Persephone awaits you.

Call Diana’s moonlit maidens to join the dance, Spring has come.