Here We Go
Here we go
Like the dust bowl families that went before
Learning to stretch the bread and milk to last through the desert
And still found gritty smiles for the shadowy photographs
Here we go again
And in the dim cold of each morning, the tedious rituals we wobble through
Are the same rituals that little Samuel did
As he hitched his overalls to his cracked boots
and plunged off through the bitter wind to the towering factory
Every day of his young life
His fingers danced like desperate spiders on the assembly line
And ours do what they must through these days
But our hands are not that different
And here we go again
The litigants in endless matters of money
The old truck, fire engine red, passed down and frowned over in every American garage
And the broom that stabbed the stony porch, in evenings of discontent
Our only punching bag when silence poisoned the home
That same broom still waits in your hall
Read a novel, see a flickering movie from another era
And if you look fiercely past the familiar
you will see your own eyes blinking back
This story of yours, it is not that new
These triumphs and tragedies, each little epiphany
That last broken cry on the fields of death
Gettysburg Pennsylvania in July
That was you who slumped on your musket and stared wide eyed into the mystery
And that same cry from the young mother as she raised her newborn son into the early light, that too was you
And so here we go again
New windows, same fields
And the barley that sways in time to the summer wind
You’ve left your footprints there for longer than you know
Here we go
(1)
I awoke this morning and remembered some of myself and was drawn to write it down
