Festival Of The Butterflies, Woodford Revisited

Before these real images fade into the
legend and dream-like place where
the gatherings of the long-haired and
flower-decked faithful hear the same
dissertations, before I see them as scarce
adumbrations of forty years passed and
burned in a night and the turning of a year,
before I grow weary let me say with awe,
I was there.

My body’s liquids vibrated in the amplified
blast of bass notes growled through the
amphitheatre, my ears felt the power
and my eyes saw them, lost in themselves,
jerking in rhythms syncopated, flailing their
hair, free-form worshipping in stark and
raw strobe lit rites, offering the rare induction
of group fusion, of dimensional mind
in solid transition.

They were too easily broken and re-birthed
in the neat hand rattle of sweet percussion
that thrummed its demands. They were
seduced by voices that mumbled manic
messages or screamed adulation while the
band played and the land swayed beneath
their pliant feet. Yet there in the crowded arena
we shared three minutes of candle-lit peace
in an eloquent unity, an unbroken silence.
© I.D. Carswell 2007