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

Reviews

[Chris]

I appreciated the linkings - sort of Cheshire thoughts blinking through the years, imprinting themselves behind my eyes.