Old Medicine Dance

The Harry Smith touchstone is the song Old Shoes and Leggings, which deals with an old man seen as an object of ridicule.  In Old Medicine Dance, surrealistic visions of Cherokee Moon ceremonies turn into a bodhisattva transfiguration via spontaneous combustion. 

Old Medicine Dance

Hoppin' down, hey, to the bus stop
his trick knee made his walk a dance.
One boot out and one boot in,
two left boots and I matched a grin 
with the people who were standing by
when he hiked up his pants,
floated up two stories high, every 
eye looking up in the sky, amazed
at the freaky little bearded guy
who was floating in a trance. Then he
gently dropped down on the street
and the feet that touched the ground 
started doing that old medicine dance.  

Dervish eyes, akimbo arms
that flapped like rubber ropes,
Plastic Man like arms and legs,
eyes like chrome prismatic lights,
his beard and hair turned into rainbow wings
and on his arms and legs,
light began to glow within
from bone to muscle, blood to skin,
and then in the petrification of
the traffic's passing glance,
the energy to crack the ground
with heaven flowing down 
started doing that old medicine dance.

Now a crowd had gathered round, 
it's there for all to see,
the twirling, swirling circle down
as faster, faster, he spun round
'til his tailbone glowed and the light flowed
up to his eyes from his two left feet.
Sparks start exploding 'round his head,
where the spirit flows, where the body's fed.
In a thirty second spinning, glowing,
flashing, twitching trance,
his body disappeared in smoke and ashes,
with the smoke still doing that 
old medicine dance. 

Copyright © 2009, 2014 by David Larstein, all rights reserved.  

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