You cut your hair in mourning, your pride, that fully
touched your butt, a veil of cinnamon
fanned out whirling around your pirouettes,
its flag unfurling greetings to the wind
lifting our spirits on the pulse of trance—
and it will grow as long again and longer
before the ache of missing him is quiet
whose music took us where, the Sufis say,
dancing is to meet a god halfway.
We will not hear his living hand again
and now his music is entirely ours,
committed to the keeping of our care
for consolation, therapy and bliss,
and our feet know the way to climb its ladder.
in memory of Jerry Garcia