Miracle At The Wedding In Taunton

They hook their sticks over the chair-back;
white haired, man and wife for fifty years,
yet as they touch the dance-floor

she takes his hand and lightens on her feet
years and sorrows fall away like a discarded dress
stepped out of, kicked aside, crumpled on the floor.

Pain lifts its veil, rain clears across the hills,
as though some merciful monarch sent a messenger
rushing in with a reprieve from age,

as if it were possible to rewind like a video
and find a different story, dance this time
to a different tune.