I got goose bumps as I watched and listened to Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream". Her performance on British television became an internet sensation - maybe because she is just so good - maybe because we all dream dreams.
The following poem reminds me of Susan Boyle:
The Dance
A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,
but when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man she’s with get up to dance,
her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained but confident ardor athwart his shoulder,
drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and moving him with such effortless grace
into the union she’s instantly established with the not at all rhythmically solid music in this second-rate café,
that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some sad conjecture, seems to be allayed,
nothing that we’d ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be admired or be repentant for,
but something to which we’ve never adequately given credence,
which might have consoling implications about how we misbe-lieve ourselves, and so the world,
that world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.
C.K. Williams
