HYmn to ​Dionysus

​Dionysus

You are the Lord and guide
of ancient mysteries
And have drunk of the nectar
of this world’s deep wells.

Host of revelries in the warm or frosty air
Trees, sun and moon look on
As initiates are led to ecstatic rebirth.
I see you in the heart of the leader
And the one who yearns to find his guide.

You plunge into the lake in all seasons
Yet rest with the robin red breast in frost.

You dance the earth a thousand times
Pine cone atop staff
Sap moving,
charming the riddled air.

I would do well to whirl
with you around a favourite tree.
Apollo smiles as we cast off burdens
and free them into the either.

I see you, I do,
in the glisten of the eyes of revellers
As they walk home in the early hours
Arm in arm.
Who knows what passed between them?
What was felt, found or lost?

Yet in this sorry world
We trudge on through
so many lost moments.
Awareness like a fading light,
What can be done?
People take cover
inside frozen lamp posts of the psyche
Or spin and burn like moths in the flame.
Frozen or burned out,
We cower
with a paralyzed snake of fear,
tightly binding our mortal frame and mind.

Only you, oh Dionysus
have the way to charm
our snakes from us,
for you are the guardian
and way finder of our fears.

You have a way of nudging
& tipping us into a place,
An edge where we see
and feel both wall and sky,
A place of clarity of bondage and release,
where we fall, where we die.

Expanding, rebirthing, courageous
we can perhaps
lift this snake from us
& you then show us
how to take it to a rich meadow
where this snake
can be one with the earth and sky.
​
Oh Dionysus,
help us to see the sunrise and sunset again
& help us to find our lost songs.
Revive our frozen limbs,
waters melting, toxins purging
and set warm blood surging,
life tingling, life honouring,
spiralling
through our mortal frame.

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