SHAMAN PRAYER
We gathered, my music friends and I, brothers in tune, though there
have been sisters among us from time to time, to bid fair well to one
of us.
As men always have, but this circle had no fire at its center, no
opening to the sky, no hole down into the Earth for admission from the
Spirit World.
As men always have, told tales of exploits, not of the hunt and
counting coup, but of hemi-head Baracudas, Camaro SS street rods, 350
powered Pintos.
Solemnity follows, a fair well prayer, bowed heads, mine too, meaning
no offense but neither accepting an offering to a lord for a lord is a
lord, in the sky or on the manor, woven from the same spool.
What would I say, asked to lead, better to decline?
Since the beginning, men have gathered ’round in circles. There ought
be a fire.
In the beginning and long into our tribal roots a fire was at the
center, under open sky, under a hole, the flaps of hide pulled aside
that smoke and spirit would rise and reach the ancestors, that the
circle be unbroken.
The circle, the wheel, the revolutions about the sun, the universal,
unity, continuity, the unchanging, though we delude ourselves with the
grandeur of our discoveries and lose our Way.
Shamans, troubadours, artists, be worthy of our gifts.