Ode to the Bodhran
The pipes play.
My tipper strikes skin and I disappear into a land long lost… I hear the tinny whistle churning out reel upon reel and someone’s dancing, barefoot in a long skirt across the dust and the warm warm grass, all hair tossing and arms flailing with children around her ankles. I can smell the fire, and the leather smells of the merchants tents where they dole out their cow and deer-hided coverings, pouches, hair-ties, pots, pans…
Someone, somewhere, is cooking, and it’s cool and the sky is damp and gravelly. Reel upon reel, faster and faster it’s churned out and I’m caught up in the thrum-tha-thrum-da-dum-pa-da-thrum of the drum as the little wooden stick bounces over it, dancing around the top-side-top-side of it, clicking the rosy frame and back for a pass across the front again. Over and over the whistle sings and the pipes play. Someone’s strumming a guitar, someone else is singing in the ancient tongue, and they dance. Someone else chants a-blessing-a-curse-a-blessing-a-curse and drops something into the flame and they dance away again, feeding the gods-and-the-ancestors, gods-and-the-ancestors.
Stars dance overhead as we play on, the sun blows herself out and the moon one by one lights their little lanterns, they twinkle to life again, over and over, round and round. They each ring little bells, little bells that tinkle on the ankles of the ladies still dancing in the firelight, all flames and circles now. We’re all lost in the music…
And we’ll play forever.
Originally posted at Crystal's World Feel free to comment here or there.