Night Dance
I Could’ve Danced All Night
by Marilyn A Wilson
I used to dance with grass skirts tied to my swaying hips, when those hips were young and narrow and smoothly flexible.
I used to dance with flowered leis draped softly around my long thin neck, streaming down onto my forming breasts softly covered with thin colorful fabric. Down, still the flowers trail onto my exposed belly as taut as the skin of a native drum. My torso muscles ripple, rise, and fall in rhythmic dance as the earth trembles with the sensual sounds of the steel guitars and the air fills with sonic vibration and mellow tunes.
My straight blond hair cascaded softly on my bare back. It is decorated with flowers circling my forehead and holding the aroma of the first morning’s dew. My slender wrists, too, held the soft petaled flowers in bracelets accentuating my dancing hands and outstretched fingertips that paint the air with stories of long ago -
Yes, long ago, the dancers were the story tellers and the stories were the legacies threaded through time. Much like the handmade leis that sat upon the dancers necks.
Those who gathered for the tales of forever ago, watched with soft & dreamy moist eyes as the dancers hands created the visions; they heard with ears that understood the music of the ancestors and the rhythms of the ages. They were transported back - back to the time when the earth served those who nurtured it .. when the seas offered schools of tropical flavors, and the humid air held the warm sunshine allowing playful bodies to skip upon its ground, and the night sky’s moons shared its evening light with those who gathered in those story circles.
That is when I danced to live and lived to dance. That is when the sand glittered upon my tanned and dancing feet. When the incoming waves tickled and cooled my painted toes pointed in the direction of yesterday. And as the salty water spray cooled my heated body, I danced with the full moons and the twinkling stars, the ocean’s waves and the balmy breezes …
…. that is when, I could’ve danced all night.