Dancing in the Dust

An ekphrastic poem inspired by this photograph of some girls in a remote village in Northern Ethiopia taken by Anna Fawcus for The Barefoot Initiative, an NGO that does valuable work in the Afar. It comes from my collection, The Ethiopian Afar and other poems, published by Ginninderra Press in 2015

Three young girls

were walking home at dusk

with their arms wrapped together

as one

when a sigh in the trees

rippled through the leaves

and their toes started tapping

in the dust,

their toes started tapping

and itching to the rhythm,

the syncopated rhythm

of their dance,

and you couldn't see their feet

as they wove a birdlike flutter

in the utter joyful stutter

of their dance.

Then they swirled and they glided

and they gracefully subsided

in torrents of clear laughter

from their hearts,

a taste of the hereafter

the gods have surely given

to those who dance together

in the dust.