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December 25, 2022
Get ready to dance
By Gary Lindorff
Fling your old shoes over the power-line / And get ready to dance a barefoot jig / The band has arrived
::::::::
Throw your gun in the lake
Surrender your angst to the volcano
Release your hate into the storm
Toss your insecurity in the fire
Cast your doubts into the wind
Add your old habits to the compost
Abandon your war-lust to the depths of the sea
Fling your old shoes over the power-line
And get ready to dance a barefoot jig
The band has arrived
And there are two fiddlers!
...................
This is a type of poem that relies on a template for an idea, where all I do is repeat the verb, or paraphrase the action of, in this case, letting go of or releasing something - whatever it is that we need to let go of - until the last two lines, which break the pattern. I wasn't happy with it until I realized that the band had two fiddlers and then I pictured the fiddlers playing the same melody in tandem and, after a while taking turns with solos, and conjuring some excitement. This is a poem for ushering in a new year. I see the week between Xmas and New Years as full of light and hope and, if possible, joy. Not of a religious nature necessarily. It's just part of who we are, embedded in our DNA. The light is returning! The darkness, receding. Let us open to new possibilities!
(Article changed on Dec 25, 2022 at 2:37 PM EST)
(Article changed on Dec 25, 2022 at 3:01 PM EST)
(Article changed on Dec 25, 2022 at 6:57 PM EST)
Authors Website: https://garylindorff.wordpress.com
Authors Bio:
Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music". Lindorff calls himself an activist poet, channeling his activism through poetic voice. He also writes with other voices in other poetic styles: ecstatic, experimental and performance and a new genre, sand-blasted poems where he randomly picks sentence fragments from books drawn from his library, lists them, divides them into stanzas and looks for patterns. Sand-blasted poems are meant to be performed aloud with musical accompaniment.
He is a practicing dream worker(with a strong, Jungian background) and a shamanic practitioner. His shamanic work is continually deepening his partnership with the land. This work can assume many forms, solo and communal, among them: prayer, vision questing, ritual sweating, and sharing stories by the fire. He is a born-pacifist and attempts to walk the path of non-violence believing that no war is necessary or inevitable.