Finger-Dance

Finger-Dance

Love Story in 28 Sonnets




finger-dance

she was sat in her car she was looking straight out ahead
she was tapping her steering wheel in time to her radio
she was singing along to her smart new car’s stereo
well dressed and coiffured and off to earn her some bread

i had been woken early a neighbour’s loud front-door slam
i stood at my kitchen window looked down saw her pass
she was moving slow with her song in a long traffic jam
she looked like a person of position stature and class

that night i set my alarm so again i could see
her pass though i knew she wouldn’t give me second glance
but still i waited gazed down through my thick double-glaze

unknown voyeur lover i watch for her pathetically
awaiting that mouthed silent song and drummed finger-dance
i watch but i have not seen her for several days



daydreaming

i watch but i have not seen her for several days
when i pass my window i look but my interest has waned
but i cannot change my error of strange watching ways
daydreaming sense says ‘nothing lost and hence nothing gained’

clichéd mind pulls me back to seek that small moving hand
that slow finger-dance that first traced my attention there
the joy i saw in her face as she silently sang
sung lines of broken thoughts that led me elsewhere

and i was fast-tracked almost back fifty odd years
young woman upon a train platform i’d left far behind
she’s holding back hair in rain with choked stubborn tears
while i stoke pretence to not care in my fired young mind

and here through my kitchen window i wander recall
we walked down love lane and passed by the white prison wall



parting

we walked down love lane and passed by the white prison wall
then out through back lane i knew and so did she
i did not want her there walking back with me at all
she would have her way and she did we walked silently

she glanced up at me and just as i awkwardly planned
i got on the train with too much we both needed to say
made some fool casual gesture a futile wave of the hand
she returned the same and slowly we both looked away

one moment less and i stepped back away from the door
the window strap up the window still open and down
i leaned out in guilt too late catch her eye just once more
but now she was staring vacantly down at the ground

i tried last farewells but could not mouth that final goodbye
as the train began to move off i stood watching her cry



unsuspecting blue

as the train began to move off i stood watching her cry
i could not hear her sobs through the noise of the train’s hiss and steam
but i saw her shoulders shaking her slight and small frame
i see her now ghosting the traffic so slow to pass by

i shut the train window i sigh with emptied relief
alone in a carriage and glad that no other is there
i sit facing south by the window looking out east
it was thursday thank god so i could relax and not share

rumbling tracks lulled me on away hypnotic and more
for beyond around unsuspecting blue grew heavy cloud
rain layered waves of black and grey shade had crept in

storm silent made dumb by window and engine’s hushed roar
then harsh upon glass sudden pelt of sleet hailing loud
“just let me in! damn you! damn you! just let me in!”



close call

“just let me in! damn you! damn you! just let me in!”
her face pressed against a square red framed window pane
that safe dry and lone red telephone box up in
muswell hill or perhaps just off of the crouch end lane?

maybe it was nearer the hampstead tube station? and yet
where it was doesn’t matter that much not really at all
except to know that we had been caught in a squall
me dry inside the red box she outside getting wet

i teased her by keeping her out before letting her in
almost left her too late all-in-all our first real close call
she smiled with bright grey-green eyes and i with tight grin
she seemed all at ease but i was not easy at all

a storm and a train and a whistle that’s in harsh alarm
she reached up to touch my cheek with her small rough palm



nothing more

she reached up to touch my cheek with her small rough palm
and now as i watch the traffic slowly move passed
she touches me still and i feel like the ghost of my past
with no wish to recall causing young love small but cruel harm

a lonely and long station platform and of course rain must fall
he moves awkwardly with an old rucksack he slams a train door
she is there to meet him she waits in the old ticket hall
she puts her arm around his waist she wants nothing more

he steps out the station no rain and the sun is too hot
he books in a sad room at the grim station house hotel
she waits downstairs his room is quite basic and bland

they go to her parents something that he’d rather not
her parents direct and polite they treat him quite well
under the table the touch of her small rough hand



awkward

under the table the touch of her small rough hand
i am nervous i find it difficult eating the meal
i am sat within awkward self judgement and also i feel
i’m treading fast water i am running through wet shifting sand

her dad is a prison warder has to check prison food
he says it is just like the inmates basic and vile
i start to wonder if he finds me also as crude
his talk is terse i listen with tense and fixed smile

then we’re out the front door and passing the old prison wall
down love lane and back lane i’m knowing this town far too well
i am caught here estranged held distant in bleak gritty charm

my hotel room’s narrow it’s long and yet oddly small
the thick door slams shut as if entering into my own cell
i can still feel her small rough hand at rest on my arm



lodestar

i can still feel her small rough hand at rest on my arm
i turn back to my kitchen window to watch for that car
i distance myself from the past and its thoughts of alarm
small finger-dance has become my longing lodestar

i look for a car that has not been seen several days
and that hand that played that wheel that turned my mind
recalled to memory a past that i thought a lost phase
reforming that departed transience i cannot command

that loss that was not nor ever could be constantly
yet taking a chanced altered view one might somehow bring
one small futile gesture to spectrally change everything
just one silent song can fill all eternity

i try to look confident as i step off the train awkward rucksack
her small rough hand on my arm is still calling me back



small rough hands

her small rough hand on my arm is still calling me back
yet how can a touch have a voice or even a past?
that presence so present so hauntingly gifted steadfast
reminding me yet all the love i refused and still lack

and this prison life now ill-formed by an aged body cell
this emptiness i live constantly solidly bodily
shallow depth i know that i know too fully well
that fullness enough that once i shared fleetingly

on some quiet nights i still stalk your old northern town
wraithlike in silence and slow in each ghosted footfall
i spirit through back streets where dirt sleets in rain pouring down
haunt love lane back lane drift passed the white prison wall

such trains of thought run odd times yet without delay
two small rough hands two hundred miles away



futile gestures

two small rough hands two hundred miles away
pull me as small fingers tap tunes on a steering wheel
pull again to a train drawn five decades back one thursday
and a casual and futile gesture and one strained weak smile

there were rings in a tree like rippling forms on wet sand
they traced silent echoes like a song in a traffic jam
tentative transient connections in a single door slam
that woke from sleep this unbodied past-present dream and

this fallacy forming this memory that stays in constant change
with ‘ifs’ and ‘what-ifs’ with ‘buts’ with lies change and doubt
storylines that uncannily reform and give verse to false form

this verse in conceit i reverse must try rearrange
but verbal deceit cannot turn the other side out
a train up north that is heading into dark storm



sensibility

a train up north that is heading into dark storm
i am striving to save something fine from sad sensibility
now lost in my layered clouds of black propensity
it swallows unsuspecting blue it makes denser form

clouded vague stirrings haunt and break into my mind
some preconscious loss calls out for ethereal clarity
forebodings of fullness i know i will still fail to find
departed lost joy spleenful innocent’s soulful disparity

a driving storm will thrash a train’s passing pane
in clouds far and near i will try to seek out her face
some altered clarity simulacrum prevails for awhile

i am heading up north riding the mid-morning train
storm has passed a past life that i too could also replace
i step down to a platform and into her warm waiting smile



rewrite

i step down to a platform and into her warm waiting smile
i’ve been waiting creating this moment for far too long
this chance to change things and go for that long extra mile
rewrite what i am and i was so to right all the wrong

i step out of myself and suddenly i have become
you’re coming toward me i slam shut an old carriage door
i smile at you’re coming toward me almost at a run
your arms round my neck as i lift you your feet leave the floor

so light as i lift you i’m swinging you to and fro
tears well in your eyes in happiness i would have it seem
somewhere inbetween that and somewhere within a new dream
and all that and none of it too this we both know

a train coasts into a station and just one time more
i step down to the platform i slam the train carriage door



pollarded

i step down to the platform i slam the train carriage door
weekend off work arranged meeting at gospel oak
the station right near the heath we laugh and we joke
as we race up parliament hill hands held tight once more

and we rush down the other side screaming insane
we rest underneath a large oak gnarled and burled
dead pollarded older oaks show us their grain
your brightness darkens as wood shades a heavier world

you finger-trace bared yearly rings of a pollarded tree
i watch your smile shadow it fades as to weighty grave stone
heavy words aged by time that encircle yet float distantly
”leaving-the-bedsit  dad’s-new-job  up-north  a-new-home”

i hear your cold voice you ask me come visit you
and i’m leaning back not knowing just what i will do



estranged

and i’m leaning back not knowing just what i will do
i lie on the hotel bed in that jaded long room
i challenge myself to tell you to soon ask of you
come live with me down in london make it our home

come back down with me or let us end this all now
i run it all through in my head time after time
i change it to quatrains i even try make it rhyme
but it still sounds blunt there’s never softening the blow

procrastination enters my new aching day
burrs into its sharpness it dulls my mind and oh how
distancing coldness furrows across my young brow

i put it all off i want it to all go away
you arm is in mine rough hands touch my skin our heads down
estranged so we walk old backstreets of your new hometown



taboo

estranged so we walk old backstreets of your new hometown
this time it is midday and it’s hot i suggest we could go
inside to a pub you say there’s something i should know
saloon bars up here are ‘men only’ you try turn around

you draw back but i am insisting we break that taboo
‘act like we’re londoners’ i say ‘they’ll simply think -
london fools bringing their city ways up in here too’
so i leave you sat at a table while i get the drink

i return with two beers and a london broad cocky smile
and all the time you are wanting to get out the door
small fingers nervously tap out your soft table-dance

we drink our drinks but you are intense all the while
‘down south’ i think ‘you’d not need take this shit for sure’
but i say nothing   let it pass   i let slip my chance



seize the day

but i say nothing   let it pass   i let slip my chance
meanwhile i find all these rewrites are falling apart
before back in london but after your northern depart
i needed to get away thought a boat-trip to france

instead i spend my weekend alone down in deal
i wanted to run the beaches race far afield
wander the long coastal path-edge to try to just feel
but gaoled in head-games i had no free resource to rebuild

so instead i just watched the tide rising up and then fall
i walked the long rippled beach as the tide ran back out
missed you wished you were there to hear the sea call
in herring-gull in tern in small gull all turning about

i sat and watched ferries crossing the channel to france
i wished i could just seize the day make self take a chance



procrastinate and die

i wished i could just seize the day make self take a chance
instead i just froze to procrastinate and to die
to old habits that retired me fast as i tried to advance
my fear is i’m impaired by sharing this truth’s silent lie

so along the sunny streets of your new hometown
he laughs and jokes and pretends and hides in his mind
you know he knows you sense what is lying behind
his talking and joking you know something else is held down

she is looking up at me with her questioning quizzical smile
she says ‘what’s wrong?’ i say ‘what?’ i diverted reply
‘nothing’ she says shakes her head we are both double-bound

he stops and looks in a shop window waiting awhile
looks through your reflection but you are still holding his eye
she turns away her head she stares at the ground



existential games

she turns away her head she stares at the ground
the train began to move i stood watching her cry
silenced by train steam and rain both drowning the sound
desire i gain i still lose train passes her by

i engulf the sky with my layered black greying storm-cloud
i damp down old feelings that flood through fixed window frames
effluent and stupid i play damp existential games
swim out of my depth youthful indifferent and proud

to inundate memory is to recall it all as a wet dream
the past all afloat the mind dives back into the known
i wash all away wave goodbye look it’s almost gone

i can sink in my ship like a fool or survive on a beam
brought down by small rough hands my slow undertow
i could drown or drift or swim there’s no right and wrong



romantic cliché

i could drown or drift or swim there’s no right or wrong
i am caught in a whirlpool that usual romantic cliché
i need to dream to tell tales and flounder away
in real and false worlds of nostalgic and silent song

a finger-dance is a walk along a wet strand
it is counting year rings inside a tree heart’s imagining
it is millions of destinies yet to be made still unplanned
past lives brought to now and all as newly becoming

i can dream that the person who’s sat in a slow passing car
isn’t just similar to someone in my past but in fact
is that very same person herself who is now driving by

or am i just taking this all a little too far?
but what if this storyline’s now become completely cracked?
she turns her head upwards i catch her grey-green eye



conflicting feelings

she turns her head upwards i catch her grey-green eye
and in that one eye-blink i am caught i know i belong
this broken banality becomes my refined silent song
more precious now to myself than i can deny

in other-time this is sure to seem totally absurd
i submit without number all meaning to meaning no thing
despite that these half-formed thoughts are hardly yet heard
all feint and unsettling whispers are still making something

i caught her eye with a wave and my mind falls away
it is overwhelmed by a moment of just feeling true
i escape into here and now through to seizing the day
as clouds might engulf an expansed unsuspecting blue

all i seek is to feel be secure and yet unconfined
these two conflicting feelings now hold to my mind



released

these two conflicting feelings now hold to my mind
they aggravate further the nausea of free will’s self control
It’s twisting and turning i am bound by my own double-bind
i know that i know that i lie that i’m above it all

this world of my either-or seems falsely constrained
the immediate now is driving beyond either two
it melds temporarily free yet still feels restrained
thesis to antithesis forming synthesis just will not do

it bifurcates yet once again but life passes unmoved
life goes its own way as harsh wind and storm-sudden hail
and though such absolutes insist i persist unremoved
relative doubled isolation will always prevail

she takes my arm and we walk to her home once again
scent of damp hair is released within past wind and rain



gaslight

scent of damp hair is released within past wind and rain
a vague sense of warmth transports me back further in time
the abc bakery islington and in passing i find
a gaslighting shadow spreads doubt true-love can remain

a jeweller’s large outside clock beckons with seven-thirty
alone together we run for the cold morning bus
lone busker sings from a doorway his donkey-jacket dirty
the bakery smells of gold bread we pass by in a rush

a gaslight once fixed here flickered the bakery wall
now there’s barely an outline of where it had once hung
once we stood beneath it our first kiss do you recall?
melding the smell of warm bread with gaslight flickering

“more fares?” bus conductor my parting dry kiss your cold cheek
that wall shadow’s gone i passed the old bakery last week



bare outlines

that wall shadows gone i passed the old bakery last week
baker’s gone too only memories left hardly seemed
possible we kissed under gas flickered shadows as to seek
to “take courage!” as that old beer poster so loudly screamed

did you know that you stole my self that moment you went?
yet i have no recall of the day that you left it’s not clear
did you take off by coach? or by train? or in your parents’ car?
all that i recall the fresh smell in your hair it’s damp scent

was that our last day? surely not? but a few days before?
on that routemaster bus? to work? in your very last week?
we rush for the bus? passed a busker? the last time for sure?
“more fares?” bus conductor my cold kiss shudders your cheek

i descend wave goodbye from the pavement i shiver she smiles
i am merely no more than feint shadow and we bare outlines



bacon and eggs

i am merely no more than feint shadow and we bare outlines
i am thinking all this as i lie on my hard hotel bed
i am staring along the vacant room’s parallel lines
enough space and time they will meet in the dread day ahead

i can hear the traffic it is passing slowly below
i will cold-water wash then shave in the room’s small hand-sink
still haven’t thought through the best way to say what i know
must be said i ask my face mottled mirror “what do you think?”

downstairs i glance out the window another hot day
i look down at my bacon and eggs i know i can’t eat
but i will while i wish i were in future-time far away
but today is the day to be seized in one hour we meet

meanwhile out my kitchen window i can also see
she’s sitting inside the car and she’s looking at me



prison-house

she’s sitting inside the car and she’s looking at me
her father’s in front in the driving seat he does not smile
i know that he doesn’t like me but then why should he?
i have not liked myself for quite a very long while

the day is a blaze fluid haze a slow river walk
we reach the riverside car-park bleakly industrial
the water is flowing past fast we walk we don’t talk
i am tensely intense with intent not spoken at all

that evening the prison-house home we are seated we eat
each mouthful is dry in my mouth almost chokes i can’t wait
till it’s over and alone and upstairs we can freely speak

my words are cold heavy granite our eyes do not meet
i ache to take back all i’ve said but now it’s too late
she is loudly weeping i watch her as both our heart’s break



one final call

she is loudly weeping i watch her as both our heart’s break
i get up leave her room i hurriedly head down the stairs
her mother rushed passed “you! wait there!” she orders and glares
i am frozen i wait by the front-door for how long it might take

i get it full fury and fast when her mother comes down
but where was your father? at work? i cannot recall
later estranged we walk the backstreets of your town
down back lane and love lane passed the white prison wall

you decided you wanted to see me off to the train
but i of course didn’t want you to be there at all
you would have your way and you did and so silently

long platform train station and at last that first slight of rain
your tears are falling with raindrops your one final call
“follow your heart” you mouth through the steam quietly



oriental plane tree

“follow your heart” you mouth through the steam quietly
imagined same words as i leapt from that first slowing train
but braking wheels screeched drowned them out so noisily
same words’ one last call washed away by that same falling rain

lost rain and hiss of steam as i try to withdraw
you look up and mouth those three words and inside i die
first i step back then again lean right out the train door
but you’re looking down my mouth’s dry i can’t say goodbye

meanwhile from my kitchen window i am watching you pass
i have not seen you drive by now for several days
since that slammed front door woke me up to finding you

you’ve changed you now have position stature and class
while i’m still daydreaming watching through thick double-glaze
oriental plane tree stands dark against the stark blue



follow your heart

oriental plane tree stands dark against the stark blue
tree is empty of autumn’s red leaves they are scattered around
morning birds serenade the traffic some peck at the ground
once more once again your slow car edged into my view

it is you and your small finger-dance drumming once more
you stop as i wave futile gestures through the years all this while
catch your eye you look up with your questioning quizzical smile
i turn leave the kitchen leave the flat i slam the front door

“follow your heart” i recalled those last words that you said
i follow down steps to your car run as fast as it takes
i am seizing the day away from my past’s fear and dread

you have finger-danced this old heart and how it has fled
right off the road’s kerb where i heard out of sight screeching brakes
she was sat in her car she was looking straight out ahead



© john william brown 04-14 February 2014 - Norwich UK –

(December 2013 – February 2014 - Revised August 2019 © jwb)