The Christmas Fire-Dance

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My great-grandfather told another story about writing poetry in Dakota. It seems that early one Christmas morning he was at a kind of poetry bazaar. There were fewer boots available than there were poets. So a poetry conference was arranged. The one who made up the best poem got the boots. The winners were going away quite contented reciting the losing poems. They said, "Oh, it's no matter. When these boots are worn out we'll have to go barefoot. Then one more of us will get a chance to do the Christmas fire-dance, and so on."

Boots 1: photo by Carlos Paes, 2005
Kandy fire dance: photo by chikuado, 2005