Dream At A Gypsy Dance Poem by James Walter Orr

I wandered, once, through the universe
With never a thought or care,
For fortune smiled on my every turn
And I had no load to bear.

Like the butterfly in the Chinese song
I fluttered from bloom to bud,
Drinking nectar sweet from each rose I passed
As the stars formed a lover’s hood.

Partaking of every offered treat
In every encountered place:
Seeking only love on each far-flung peak,
Seeing only love in each face.

I came by chance to a meadow green
At the foot of a mountain trail,
And stumbled into a gypsy camp
As the fiddles began to wail.

At first there was only this strange lament,
With a powerful, visceral beat,
That ran through my heart and my soul and my blood,
And settled at last in my feet.

The cadence was strange and the beat was strong
And was blowing my mind, I feared,
When a gypsy soul sprang to center stage,
In a dance that was wild and weird.

In moments I fell in a gypsy spell,
While the fiddles moaned and cried.
The hypnotic, psychotic, chaotic, call
Brought me straight to the gypsy’s side.

The blue smoke curled, and the hot sparks whirled
In time with the gypsy’s dance,
But nothing could match her flying feet:
They could only deepen my trance.

Then she took my hand, and she led me off
To the side, where the campfire burned.
The fiddles had ceased and all others were gone,
But the echoes crashed and churned.

I took her face between my palms
And her heart beat against my breast.
We lived for years in a single hour,
But I longed for a lifetime feast.

Again she took me by my palm
And she looked at my lifeline’s way,
While a shadow passed through the moon-lit night
And stifled the moon’s last ray.

She seized a flask of a gypsy brew,
And poured it into a pot.
She added samples of herbs and plants
And a veil from off her cot.

The foxfire shone in an eerie glow-
In the mixture she dropped a tear,
While a strange soft hum and a distant drum
Made a sound too low to hear.

She poured a brimming jeweled flask
Of the foaming, frothing brew,
And said, “Oh love, you must drink it now,
Or there’s nothing I can do.

I kissed those lips, so rich and full
And filled with the stuff of dreams;
Then I drank the potent mixture down,
And it happened thus, it seems:

I faded away to a different place,
And a different time and life,
Just as sure as the dew can wet the grass,
And that death can end all strife.

At times I could only feel her hands
As she ministered strange to me.
At times I could only hear her voice
As she sang some melody.

I sank, at last, to a dreamless void
At the end of time and space.
I knew not what I was reaching for,
In that cold and lonely place.

I woke with the raindrops on my face
And a heart that was filled with grief,
For the meadow was vacant from signs of life:
Now my heart can’t know relief.

Now I wander again through the universe
But my heart is not carefree.
The blossoms still wait along the trail
But with no appeal for me.

My path returns to the mountain glade
Each time the moon is full.
My heart explodes with exquisite pain
When I feel that timeless pull,

Of the gypsy love on that starcast night
While the gypsy sang and the fiddles played,
And my future went with her gypsy soul,
In the mountain meadow where we laid.