.................................
That Dark Sky
.................................

Is any profane man in the street? Is any within?
Let him withdraw. Hushed be every lip to holy silence.
Ever shall I hymn Dionysus in the old, old way.

Euripides (The Chorus in The Bacchants, 455 B.C.)

When I was a kid in Polson, Montana,
a rainstorm was a gift.
A dark, shadowy hand would
descend upon my little town
in the summer,
dripping a startling rejuvenation
upon our thirsty heads.

I remember playing in the front yard
of our house when
the green paws of rain
pelted us suddenly.
I remember running inside,

snatching up tupperware cups
and dashing out among
the willow and walnut trees,
holding my cups straight up to the sky.
That dark sky provoked
something wild in me.

I handed cups to my brother
and to my sister and
we frolicked in the pure green rain.
We held our cups into the sky,
as high on tiptoes as possible,
and then we sank into
ourselves
and drank the rain, together,
like blind people praying.

II.

I did not know, at that time,
that this was a Dionysian ritual.
Now I am older, I have studied the
mythical implications of
drinking the stuff of the earth.

I have read Euripides and I know
how Dionysus felt.
The rainwater was
an endless fountain of red wine for us.
We reveled in the riotous
storm.
We tossed our bodies
into the mud and grass.
We howled into the drops
like drunken tree-dwellers.

Every tupperware cup of rain
increased our skylarking;
we were finally beginning our lives.
The leaves of the paper birch
glowed, glyphic and bright green.
The Sunday morning service
was no longer a threat.
We were riding the strength,
the first, beloved strength
of our bodies
on the wet ground.

We were in the grip
of Dionysus;
on the rocket to the fire.
Our lives would never be the same.

 
.................................
Here, Catch
.................................

I stole some candy
with a pal.
We walked to the
icy end of the pier and laughed.
We fed blue chunks of moon
to the fish below,
our bellies flat on the old wood.
The vodka inside our bodies
volunteered to sing
old Beatles songs,
Across The Universe, Blackbird, Little Girl.
The red rock n' roll fish
played drums with their tails.
We placed the candy
on the pier
in the shape of a celebration.
We placed the candy in our mouths.
My pal kicked me in the ass,
got up and staggered into the city lights, onward.
Here, catch, he said
and tossed me the bottle of vodka.
I let it fall down to the water,
to our friends.
Hand me that satellite,
I laughed,
hand me that star.

.................................
Brian Pinsker
.................................

 
Copyright © Brian Pinsker
January 1998

...a poem by Michele Walker in this room...
Planet Ocean: Dancing to the Fossil Record
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