The Drummer

The drummer is a god, and all gods:

Warlike Thor of the Norse, raging and roaring, rising in wrath, his bellowing hammer-blows beating back the Ice Giants, buying back the sun for a season;

Mad manic Loki, untamable trickster, Deceiver who plays more than his four limbs should allow;

Demon Quetzalcoatl, screaming for blood, and ever more BLOOD, straining to break the universe in his fury;

Many-limbed Brahm, dancing life and death, yin and yang, good and bad, light and darkness, and all there is into being;

Flame-faced Ra, blazing in white-hot glory, breathtaking in his intensity, before whom and without whom none can stand;

Olympic gods of sunny Greece, sometimes gliding slowly in graceful, holy, godly splendor, and sometimes pouring forth rivers of wine and getting down to some insane dancing and long, languorous lovemaking;

Gods so old their true names are forgotten, gods that live in wood and stone, fire and water, air and earth, beasts and trees, men and women, all holy, all alive, pulsing, resonating with one great rhythm;

Keeping time with Time himself, eternal, infinite Ourobouros, beginning where he ends and begins again;

Echoing Jehovah’s primal LET THERE BE, he creates a new thing, he channels what has always been, as an ancient Power flows through him, rises like a challenge, a summons, as his hands dance with the joy of creation, a dance wild and free, yet disciplined and precise;

He is the poet who has got beyond mere words and into pure expression;

While others would suck the marrow out of life, he plays the living bones.

© John M. Munzer