| A boy was born in the shadows of the pines, come down from the mountains to where the desert rises, rich and red, green and pale, sky full of sun and clouds, and all things talking, talking of rain, talking like lightning, talking of rain He lived in a room, white walls and high ceilings, and when he was young, the night and the moonlight would sing him this song: I'll take you home I'll take you home my darling, please don't go alone I'll take you home river is wide river is wide my darling's on the wrong side river is wide rainstorm today rainstorm today tomorrow got washed away in the rainstorm today baby don't cry baby don't cry the raindrops fall from the sky baby don't cry And that was the song that filled the room, in the night when he was a child. And he did not cry when he heard it, for he knew the song was true. Gentle in the night raindrops are falling, and life to the desert, and life to us all And the boy is growing, older again, and walking by day through the streets of the town, and meeting his neighbors there, and greeting them, and seeing their lives, and knowing his family more with each passing year, his mother and his father, the grandmothers and grandfathers, the people who were friends, all of them, knowing them more with each passing year and knowing their lives like he knew their joys he knew their sorrows... And so he grew, and when he was a young man, he began to work in the fields by the town, and in some seasons, he would walk out from the town, into the desert by day, and in the evening, he would play music, and make a meal with his family or his friends, and at night he would fall asleep in the same room he always had, with the same melody playing in the night, promising to take him home... Now it is evening, he has climbed to a hilltop, to look out over the lamplights under the starlight to hear the faint melodies of the songs the others hear at night, to wonder at the sound of just the wind in his ears, to feel the day turn into night... and the day turns into night... And a light burns brightly in the town, where people have gathered together to sing and play music, to watch the day disappear above the highest clouds, and sing under the night... And they sang a song, he heard it very faintly from the hilltop, it was mixed with other musics, and caught in the branches of trees, and it wrapped around fenceposts, and it lay in the grass where the grass was long, so he heard it very faintly, but I will sing it for you as the people in the town heard it, and as he had heard it before, on summer nights before: all the time in the morning all the words in the song all the ways of returning to the place we are from let forever go by our light, it will never go out all the steps in the journey all the stones in the road travel on, travel joyful trouble can't stop a soul let forever go by our light, it will never go out have you heard we were broken in the time of the fall? in the spring, we are singing in the song we are whole let forever go by our light, in the melody shines... we will not walk over our own no longer, when I know my brother my soul my sister my soul my mother my soul my father my soul my son my soul my daughter my soul let forever go by... He heard the song faintly, it is true, but he heard it deep this time, and he stood up from where he was sitting, looked out over the town, and he walked away. He did not feel like saying goodbye, he did not feel that he was leaving, he was going to find something, he was going to find something out, to see something up close, that had always been just over the edge of the horizon, He took water from the well, he drank deeply, he walked into the night... (next page...) |