Moonlight Ballerina
It started as the kind of night
I always feel with you:
Love and joy and tenderness –
An intoxicating brew.
Those big expressive eyes of yours
Were dancing with delight.
Your smile, your laugh, your silliness –
A once-in-a-lifetime sight.
And then when we were going home,
Ambling through the park,
You ran a little ahead of me
And there in the silvery dark,
I saw you leap into the air
And do a pirouette –
The kind you did as a little girl
At your weekly ballet vignette.
Only Julia and I were there
When you bolted toward the sky.
But it felt as if you were at the Bolshoi
On a crowd-applauding high.
Because this spontaneous little act
Reflected such unbridled zest,
I know it sprang from deep in your heart –
The place where stardom rests.
Two years later I still recall
The wonder of that scene.
Your exuberance returns so vividly
In dream after dream after dream.
Show me again the happiness
You showed me on that day,
And, I promise, my Moonlight Ballerina,
I will love you, come what may
(Feature photo of Irina Semenjuk from Ukraine. Courtesy photo.)
Hal Foster is a longtime journalist and journalism professor who has worked in the United States, Japan, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. His news career has included writing and editing at the Los Angeles Times and nine years as a journalist in Japan. He is an associate professor of Communication at the new Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan. Catch one of his other blogs at en.tengrinews.kz.