DANCING THE DREAMING

DANCING THE DREAMING

Aborigines on an Austin stage
Dancing the dreaming

But something’s wrong

They dance in stage lines not sacred circles
Men and women dancing together
Even I know that’s not how they did it

My Aussie friend points out that they have
no scars of initiation

Drug store cowboys
in five and dime dream time

The phoniness bothers me for quite a while
They are not really doing the sacred songs
They probably don’t even know the sacred songs

Of course if they did they wouldn’t be singing
them for us

On a Texas stage
in five and dime dream time

And yet there is something happening
below the surface
that starts to pull me in

The didgeree-do is made from a real tree
The circular breathing to blow it is there
strong and free

Something real is rising through it all
Something I don’t understand
Something they don’t even understand

If you listen real close you can hear it
below and through and beyond it all

Fifty thousand years of DNA singing