Ode to Billy Jack

Once upon a rainbow night, some hippies gathered by a fire. Stories began to move in circles of light in the glimmering moonshine.Tales of heroics from the cool seventies became known as hipstories...Interpreted means "legends", and every hippie from the old days has some.

Spotlights begin with the moonshine in the early dark of night
And not the moonshine hillbillies are prone to sample. Mountain men use a jug,
hippies' moonshine comes in two ways....In a flask sometimes, but usually it falls out from the sky
and bathes dancers like a disco flood light
rivoting in the eerie shadows of black lights,
but more romantic....
Hippies dance to the rhythm of the drums
as they beat out in harmony to the native wiles of the heart....
And symmetric dancers express the artful beauty
of body in movement....
Some naked, some dressed expressly to speak the native songs;
All poetic;
all beautiful;
all a prelude to the birth of legends.

As for poetry, and beauty, and legends....the song remains the same,
All beat to the rhythm of freedom as it lives in the heart.
This freedom cannot be found defined on the pages of a book.
Nor can this freedom be expressed in one poem,
or one work of nature's beauty
or in the tale of one legend...
Rather, this freedom that lives in the heart
is the sum total of the expression of all these things:
poetry, beauty, legends, music, dance, thunder, lightning,
the beating of the drums,
and the pulsating heartbeat in the breast of a child who for the first time gazes in awe and wonder, and with the eyes of innocence drinks in the essence of the freedom of life; for a child knows no boundaries or limits; but instead, seizes life in it's true existence; uninhibited, totally free........



Free to laugh, free to cry, free to run and dance and frolic with wind, free to be real.
A child in free expression is the foundation for all true poetry for they are the rhyme in the words that inspire us to express our love, our passion, our drama and our fury....climactic...wild...free....as intense as the thunder and lightning in a storm......as soft as the petals of a flower.....as fragrant as a meadow moist with the early morning dew....as compassionate as a child who hugs a kitten closely to their breast to give it love and warmth .....as furious as a tornado when it crashes to earth in a funnel of wind, ice and debris as it shreds the ground below.....as beautiful as the love song that rends a heart and makes tears flow as freely as a spring rain.....as painful as the sound of crying to a new mother or as anguished as the perils of war in all it's devastation of life.....



A child in free expression is the foundation for all these things and more......for feeling the full spectrum of senses and emotion is the real definition of freedom....unfettered.....expressed.....fulfilled.




And it is on this foundation of freedom that all poetry is found, that all beauty is visualized. It is from this premise of real freedom that all legends are born. And from this premise springs forth the greatest "hipstory" ever to be told, a legend of legends, a magnitude greater than quake 8.0 ..... the ultimate tale of freedom lives in the pages of the stories of the rainbow.

This tale beats in hearts 144,000 strong.

The sound of these heartbeats reaches beyond the realm of the known, past the boundaries of the heavens and into the Infinite Songs being sung once upon a Rainbow Night by some Hippies gathered by a Fire.



Listen closely in the quiet of night and you will hear the rhythm of drums and hearts beating in harmony with the moonshine and just a whisper above the rhythm the sound of a melody becomes clear in the faint echoes of the words.....

(singing softly)......


All we are saying, is give peace a chance.....
All we are saying, is give peace a chance....
All we are saying, is give peace a chance.....

And the legend lives on.............



By Summer Breeze, "Mary Sunshine" July 23, 2001


Inspiration received at the Idaho Gathering.
It is dedicated to Billy Jack and the movie that helped impress
my young mind to take the course in life that I needed to follow.
Thank you Tom Laughlin(Billy Jack) and Dolores Taylor for giving America the vision.










I am inviting all musicians to consider making a recording of the poem "Ode to Billy Jack" as a gift to the Rainbow Family of Living Light. Music background would be most desirable and a good narrating voice to read the words, with a quiet background of singers singing "All We are Saying is give Peace a Chance". Email me if you want to make this dream a reality. I will help distribute the CD's. All funds from the CD will be used for legal funds for the rainbow family and for charity to the family, to include providing food for main circle and other supplies such as for C.A.L.M., water pipes, filters and radios.


Email summer breeze at angelonmyshoulder77@yahoo.com if you wish to produce this CD.