Tokyo Jetlag Evening Walking

Out of my throat appears this chuckle

A true 20th Century sound

A little crazed and having no tonal centre



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 flash 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 mind

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, static spark,

storm front, energy circle delineated by leaping limbs



1st 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 centre



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



(Tokyo 5/9/79)