Down through the leafy branches fell the rain –
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drip.
Drop.
Monotonously and soothingly,
like a drummer winding down
after a frenzied celebration,
came the rain as we waited out the final hours of our pannychis
in the woods round Parnassos.
We erected the turf-mound shrine,
littered with flowers and string, dolls and masks,
and dozens of beeswax candles
crowning it all with a boukranion and the sacred double-headed axe.
We danced and drank, drank and howled,
raced between the trees in the dark and drank some more,
swung the bullroarer, drank, chanted Orphic verses, drank,
made offerings to the forest Nymphs and the Restless Dead,
drank, thought we’d crawled all the way to the bottom of a rabbit hole
but it was just a fox’s burrow,
drank and drank and drank,
and did some other stuff too.
For some reason most of my memories of that night are a little fuzzy,
but I’ll always remember the sound the rain made as it fell
during our vigil for the neighbors of Pyrrha and her honey-sweet husband.
