Soirée

The heat swelters,
but that might be only
inside my own self.
I feel bothered—
perhaps to an unreasonable degree—
by the gray haze that hovers between me and the sky.
I strain to see the stars.
Above us,
the Dipper looms large and low,
clouded by the smoke and unheeded
by the revelers.
Thousands upon thousands, they come,
with red-round faces
and sweating hands.
By the light of a hundred smoky torches,
they drink and get drunk.
The noise of their squalid laughter
spreads over the hillsides like a milk-filled ocean,
pulsing with the drumbeats
that sway and steady and change tempo without notice.
Dancers are faint by the firelight—
I think, perhaps, that they dance for their own pleasure alone,
but the eyes of many are on the half-naked, writhing bodies
and their indistinct shadow-forms.
My shadow is the longest,
for I stand farthest from the fire,
burning from the inside
and swaying slightly with my empty cup.
A thousand strangers and a throbbing drum—
if I had a cool place to sit in the dark corners,
and I could see the yellow stars,
I might—just possibly—
fall asleep peacefully.