This poem, written by the wonderful Don McKay, is dedicated to my hardworking band of RiVa buddies, you throw one heck of a Halloween partay. And also to Mr. Dancing Dracula, who ever he is. That guy can really cut a rug!
TO DANCELAND
No one is ever happier than when they're dancing
--Margaret McKay
South through bumper crops we are driving to Danceland, barley
oats, canola, wheat, thick as beaver pelt, but late, she said,
late, since June had been so cold already we were deep
in August and still mostly green so it was nip
and tuck with frost and somewhere between Nipawin and
Tisdale finally
I found the way to say, um, I can't dance
you know, I can't dance don't ask me
why I am driving like a fool to Danceland have flunked it
twenty-seven years ago in the kitchen where my mother,
bless her, tried to teach me while I passively resisted,
doing the jerk-step while she tried to slow, slow, quick quick
slow between the table and the fridge, her face fading
like someone trying to start a cranky Lawnboy
nevertheless
step by sidestep
we are driving down the grid, Swainson's hawks occurring every
thirty hydro poles, on average
to Danceland
where the dancefloor floats on rolled horsehair
and the farmers dance with their wives even though it is
not Chicago
where the mirror ball blesses everyone with flecks from
another, less rigorous dimension
where the Westeel granary dances with the weathervane,
the parent with the child, the John Deere with the mortgage
where you may glimpse the occasional coyote lopes and gopher hops
where the dark may become curious and curl one long arm
around us
as we pause for a moment, and I think about my mother and her
wishes in that kitchen, then
we feed ourselves to the world's most amiable animal,
in Danceland.
from Apparatus (1997)
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