Midnight Moutain & Moon Dance, two poems by Susan Hawthorne

The mountain is cold at midnight.
We have drunk hot wine, spiced red.

In our hands we carry torches,
lighted and flaming.

We start slow, at the top, finding
the white path through the snow.

Above the moon fills passages
with light, spreading yellow.

The wind caresses cold, and the wax
covers our faces, cracking grey.

Twenty of us slide, our skis rasping
against the ice, black on white.

I cannot feel the cold for the warm
wine, the hot wax, the crisp wind.

I see the flares, rising red against
white, against black.

A waiter dressed in the colours of the moon–
black pants, white shirt, red bowtie–
dances some old remembered steps

over the soccer ball, chased by
a small boy, blond as the sun–
He dances then passes on the ball.

A single team of nine dancers
once kept the ball moving, once kept
the moon dancing through the mythic year