A Final Dance Poem by Barry Middleton

I long to walk a barefoot path again,
in the soft summer sand of a childhood creek.
I long to move silently on wet autumn leaves,
to drift in the earth tones after rain,
and be showered by a shimmering limb,
where a frightened squirrel tries to hide.
Yet I still feel the sand, and in another season,
I can smell the air of the harvest morning.
Within my time machine,
I can stop and listen to the crackling sound
beneath my boots of a hard frost of sparkling
diamonds in the pasture of a cedar valley,
the trees decorated in crystal prisms.
I can see the white light of sacred snow
revealing every contour of lost secrets
on a hillside of gray trees.
I can feel the fire in the wood stove,
and hear it ticking and cooling like time,
in a cabin in deep woods. And moving on,
I return to spring in a glass of lemonade,
golden as a daffodil, sweet as a first kiss.
I cannot go there but I do,
I cannot touch a dream,
but I can feel it in my heartbeat,
like a movie I have seen before,
like the final dance that ends the year.