Poem for the Day: Young Love in Bobby Socks

Young Love in Bobby Socks

Under the outside porch, the wind knocks at the windowpanes. You crouch down on the front step, it's comical and the little petals of his pink corsage brown with exhaustion. Your hand shakes, pinning it onto your cardigan, and quickly you rush through the streets to the entertainment hall. Red lights charm musicians' faces. This beautiful kingdom is in the mood, and now it's 'Rock around Clock'. You put your high tail on, flay back, pucker lips, spin in the wave of his arms that dominate the night, tap the parquet floor as if it's the clickety-clack of the train that runs beside the sea. Your shining face is a rose in his eyes. The dance is a handshake like a weapon that pulls you quickly from fear, then back again into the light. Your right leg swings a charleston side to side. It's a kick high, kick back. What a dance! What a dancer! See how his hands are like handlebars, as he jitterbugs to the right of your body in opposite flight, a two-time double shuffle according to his beat. You follow. He spins, pulls you in, pulls you back, and under as if you're going through town in his white Cadillac, absorbing his grace, his dimpled chin, as he hauls you into a night full of stars, and then the vibrations of the hall subside, and you're back on the porch, with the lights left on. You don't see his hands holding your face, kissing your face with makeup in your eyes, and he goes away, crushing the heavy bushes you've both stepped from, your bobby socks full of burrs. You walk inside, into the rest of the night, tap on the wardrobe, tap on the bed, tap on the headboard overhead, your heart in paradise.