The Dancing Teacher
Suzanne Morris
August 3, 2025
– Dorothy “Dotsy” Niland Toole, 1925 - 2025
for Nette
How hard it must have been
to sit still
and wait for her
entrance cue
through the long days
of her 99th year
while the rest of the world
kept on dancing.
Nothing to do but
be spoon-fed love by
round-the-clock
caregivers,
family members who
came every day,
and a Priest bringing
the Holy Sacraments once a week
for she’d never missed Mass
in her life, in later years
driving across Los Angeles
to hear it in Latin
because that’s what
she grew up with
in a big-hearted Irish
family of five, with
various aunts, uncles, cousins,
friends and dancing pupils
coming and going
through the back door
sure, set another place
around the big table.
How natural she must have felt
when surrounded by
adoring dance pupils
like me
from the time I was three
in my pink leotard and tutu,
teaching full classes all day
and into the evening
in her black tap shoes laced up
with grosgrain ribbon
coaxing the chaotic clatter
of tiny tap-shoed feet
into a rhythmic
shuffle-ball-change
gray-haired Mrs. Sacious
at the upright piano
in the rented parish hall of Houston’s
Episcopal Church of the Redeemer.
For decades she kept teaching,
from Texas to California
anyone who wanted to learn;
a few years back, recovering
from a serious fall
she taught her
physical therapist
how to dance.
When I saw the
lithe young woman
smiling at us ethereally
from her obituary
in a shimmery gown,
corsage on her shoulder
dark hair pinned back and
kicked up at the ends
we were little pupils again
looking up to her, to teach us
how to hold our arms
just right
how to take the next step
as if we had never grown older
than we were then.
That’s why I know
how hard it must have been
to sit still
and wait for her
entrance cue
while the rest of the world
kept on dancing.
A native of Houston, Suzanne Morris has made her home in East Texas for nearly two decades. Her poems have appeared in anthologies as well as online poetry journals, including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, The Pine Cone Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.
