The Rainbow People

He's drunk at nine that morning -- it's nothing new --
He's been drunk since 1970, twenty years
And homeless since, a life he chooses here
Among his friends, hippies
On a religious quest, shamamism
Intertwined into their drinking.
Brother -- the name they know him by --
Says they do it to show the world that this
Is how we're not to live.
He says this sitting in his kitchen,
Blue tarp held up by tree branches,
A fire pit in the center, boiling water.
Twice as many here are in their twenties
Escaping . . . what?
Cities, civilization. Children
Blond and dirt-streaked, run and play.
Women with long hair, goateed men --
Half have dusty dreadlocks. Spaghetti
Cooks over a fire. Guitars and Beatles songs,
Standing up to every stereotype
As they spend the winter just off New York Road
Among the pines of Mississippi.