Midsummer Night

There were fires raging on the lake as the sky stayed bright
And the dance of the tarantula with stars that echoed through the night
And this is my body and this is my blood
And this is my final Easter egg hunt through the mud
In the cold and crazy, uncomfortably easy and lazy solution to the farm problem

With managed-care facilities and clotheslines and bankable stars under contract
With flotsam and jetsam and retsin and Pepcid AC in the ashtrays in the back
And the third leg of the triple crown just would not lay down
But by that time we had pretty much left misery to the Mexicans
And the seconds were looking for a fight
As the days and the months took flight
And we mixed our wine with our coffee on Midsummer Night

And the mad modern mystical universal language of basketball
Set the eggs down firmly and said what do you want and where’s your passport and did you punch your ticket
And do you believe that your soul is a vestigial dying organ like your appendix
And are you aware that the way to San Jose has to detour around the police tape
And the wilderness slowly started to turn into cough drops
And a time machine and a machine gun became the last, best answer to keeping grounded and keeping the kids occupied
And the difficult road up to heaven
Was one more choice in an ocean
Of choices of voices of white waves pounding the shore leave
And green and blue turned white
And up and down turned right
And our New Year’s Resolutions kinda got forgotten on Midsummer Night

And the babies jumped out of their strollers and tweaked the noses of the supposers and turned the hoses on the houses
Of the pope and the dope soap-on-a-rope and the antelope which they resembled more than the hopeless other humans
And the celebrity sextuplets set their clocks for spiritual awakening orr 8:30 or whichever came first
And the headlines screamed, leave your dog at home
And they let Mike Tyson out of jail to fight
A pumped-up Ben Franklin and his kite
And the sun never set
The sun never set
The sun never set on Midsummer Night….

(lyrics: Dan Bern)

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