At Your Engagement Party

To Adam

I kept taking photos of

your gate-crasher, because

she couldn't resist the music, 

drawn in through open door 

of the party restaurant

to where the guitarist sat, 

in a corner so he wouldn’t be crowded. 

It was all those 

liquid Spanish tunes. How 

could she have refrained, how ever,  

from dancing?

And she was so bright, 

in her shiny, slinky, green-and-yellow dress,

and she clicked her heels Flamenco-style,

and clapped her hands over her head.

And she kept apologising, softly, shyly,

in her foreign accent, but 

she didn’t stop dancing, didn’t stop twirling,

didn’t stop brightening further –

as if under a spotlight …

creating her own spotlight –

the already-festive night.

(She gave permission for her photo to be used online. 

We never learned her name.)