The Grand Fete

THE GRAND FÊTE

At the Grande Fête everyone’s invited to
people start arriving by aerial gondola

Shape-changing twins arrive
dressed in tuxedos

Lady Godiva comes dressed
as a smudge-blotched charwoman

Historians come with inky thumbs
in suits made of parchment

Serenaders arrive on whiffles of song
neon red cummerbunds like those worn at the Vatican

Various woodland creatures arrive
in human disguise and no one’s the wiser

Orpheus comes with his head firmly on
wearing a snake costume since

that’s what bit Eurydice
and sent her to Hades

(he’s trying to reverse it)

Dressmakers priests pompous
diplomats aristocrats

arrive on gold bicycles
with playing cards in the spokes

A forest fire arrives dressed as a fireman
a drought totters in dressed as a skeleton

Even the End of the World
though he’s not been invited

Dressed as all and everyone
who ever walked the earth

but even
wiser and more beautiful

Then the Next World arrives
not long afterward

wearing the exact same Apocalyptic
costume but in reverse

Conversation bubbles
everyone dances the

standing-still vibration green dance of
everything living

Pretty soon distant stars come and
far constellations

Then the entire cosmos comes
just before dawn

and at one point (some say drunk)
turns inside-out completely

And we all land here as
naked as day

Alive at last in a new constitution
ethereally nourished by stream waters

direct from The Source
as well as

bowls of ambrosia and lotus flowers
floating in air

though air is no longer
it’s something else altogether

God’s Presence taking place
where our place is left vacant

and only song remains
trembling among

high boughs
of nothingness

---

12/1/08 (from Sparks Off the Main Strike)

Categories: Poems