Festival
________
Drawing down the sun
in celebrated swallows,
the day bursts into fullness.
We sat on pudding grass,
exchanging woolly glances
of admiration with the spirits
of long-dead slave-musicians.
The women in the snake dresses
wore the quarter notes in their legs.
Have you noticed how people grow when they dance
and stretch beyond their borders when they listen?
The music borrows their bodies and ears
to find its being.
I told my nickname to the sky
and reached beyond my grasp for its blessing.
I have found my toe-shadow of sacred ground
on which to celebrate creation.
Those who live for the music
know something that others may never know:
When it's coming, don't fight it,
drift freely into its wildness.
Unintended midnights later,
you will have <this> -
unseared, unsought, unsoiled it will return to you.