Dance Domestic

my mother would dance
the honey floors clean
to the clarinet of Benny Goodman

i play the Buena Vista Social Club
and sun-dance the washing off the line
me and the white sheets billowing

i take your fatherhood t-shirt off the line

there's a photo of you wearing it, new,
the baby on your forearm
neat as a falconer's glove

this t-shirt's seen ten years wear
around the neck it's crepey
papery as your fatherhood
worn fragile

don't notice you dancing much these days
maybe fathers don't

your father did once
until your mother slammed
the piano lid on his jazz-dancing fingers

my own father a photo ghost
radiating strength like a Brahman bull
doubtless he danced a tango or two

but took his headstrong leave
in a spangle of windscreen glass sequins
before Benny Goodman could even dance me out of the womb