|
Wish you could be better
Shooting like you'd seen in those films?
But you're driving it down
like that '78 Crown Vic
you found in the ravine
down in Hillman Hollow
You’re some mid-century gothic
some modernist’s dream
There was a school bus and a tractor
bullet holes and broken windows
the scraping of fallen leaves
There was a smile on your face
when you asked her for forgiveness
but you'd have to beg
Come here
Come here
Come here
Come here
There's stories of that old man
That very same tractor grown over with fox grape
rusting to dust in the field
That wooden deck bridge that he'd cross coming for the
afternoon aperitif
collapsed into the creek
He'd talk about places that she'd never been
Wink and tell her they'd ride that old tractor to Lynn
as remarkable as it's always been
And the old drunk started spinning
|
the fiction he was to make of her father
those afternoons in the barn
And out in the barn
old Leif's bottle and a song
In the house three young girls to feed
and a young widow to be
Holding your breath and counting to ten
racing the devil up the dirt track
falling and skinning your knees
Those old superstitions
Your pulse in your ears like voices
say "get up and
never
look back
look back
look back"
In a picture with no frame
“Man, he looked just like you, brother.
Good thing you stopped drinking whiskey
when it burned a hole in you.
You know,
Mother told me that he had a friend
who helped him with the feat
and I remind her of old Leif.
Yeah, I remind her of old Leif.”
|
|
