First Kiss
“Allemande left, allemande right.
Promenade your lady, hold her tight!”
Years later, I recall demands
for touching waists and holding hands.
To “Promenade. Go ’round the world.”
We do-si-doed and faced and whirled.
Square-dancing was called to blame
the day I first encountered shame.
Just six years old and mild and meek,
a boy my age dared peck my cheek.
His mother pulled him off the floor,
then jerked him rudely out the door,
shaming him with words and action
before I knew my own reaction,
which might have merely been a measure
of a friendly mutual pleasure.
Instead, for twelve more years together,
held as classmates in close tether,
much as I perhaps desired
that we might have again conspired,
he never tried what once was censured.
Another kiss was never ventured
’til in our twenties, home from college,
emboldened by our further knowledge,
home briefly for summer vacation,
heartened by a small libation,
finding ourselves in darkened car
up on a hill, his mother far
away in town, we finally kissed,
discovering what we had missed.
Then we went our separate ways—
that one night just a summer’s phase.
Years later, though, I still recall.
that first kiss, and his mother’s gall
over what was a gentle theft
prompted by an “Allemande left.”
The “guilty parties” are, it is true, pictured above, but I’m not one to kiss and tell. This true memory was prompted by today’s “Daily Addiction” prompt of promenade.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 