Older brother, restless soul, lie down,
Lie for a while with your ear against the earth,
And you'll hear your sister sleep talking,
Say, “Your hair is long but not long enough to reach
Home to me,
But your beard
Someday might be.”
And she woke up in a cold sweat on the floor,
Next to a family portrait drawn when you were four,
And beside a jar of two cent coins that are no good no more,
She'll lay it aside.
Older father, weary soul, you'll drive
Back to the home you made on the mountainside,
With that ugly, terrible thing –
Those papers for divorce,
And a lonely ring,
A lonely ring.
Sit on your porch
And pluck your strings.
Oh, and you'll find somebody you can blame,
And you'll follow the creek that runs out into the sea,
And you'll find the peace of the Lord.
Grandfather, weary soul, you'll fly
Over your life once more before you die,
Since our grandma passed away,
You've waited for forever and a day
Just to die,
And someday soon
You will die.
It was the only woman you ever loved
That got burnt by the sun too often when she was young,
And the cancer spread and it ran into her body and her blood,
And there's nothing you can do about it now.