Hoop Dancer

Tokyo Jet lag Evening walking Out of my throat appears this chuckle A true 20th Century sound A little crazed and having no tonal center The echoes of this laugh fade for a long time Snaking among those jumbled pedestrians Following that struggling Cedric taxicab Sliding over the seeming infinity of white light and neon With no warning, mind's eye winks like a lifespan And opens again on memory flashes of prairie Indian dancers They're on a stage, all jigging motion And flare of bright feathers, surrounded by white faces Floating on a sea of mud Hoop dancer struts in front, drum and voices blend with endless rain There's a time line Something like vertical, like perpendicular Cutting through figures shuffling on horizontal plane Cutting through the survival pride of the dancers Through the guilty, sentimental warmth of the crowd Through to some essence common to us, to original man To perhaps descendants, numberless or few Where it intersects the space at hand This Shaman with the hoops stands Aligned like living magnetic needle between deep past and looming future Butterfly pierced on each drum beat, wing beat Thunder clap, storm front, static spark Energy circle delineated by leaping limbs First man, last man, dancing man, man dancing Hoops in hand trampled grass circle spreading Voices flame above crazy coyote heartbeat drum I see sunrise on the plains, big river at dusk Perpetual pillar of dust on prairie rim and always overhead Those wings, circling, turning He's the earth, he's the egg, he's the eagle always circling Always turning, always comes back to the center Hoops whirling, now transparent feet touch down on anaconda streets And on the next leap dissolve slowly into the moving lights Rainbow steps, jerking universe Goodbye, man-in-time And just beyond the clatter and cars the last long notes of wild voices ring Like Roland's horn --- Hoop Dancer - Bruce Cockburn