We Were Together

Keep thinking about how we’re gonna have to change

We talk all about it,

But what is the change, and when does this change begin?

And is it as bad as it seems?

How will we be getting by when all around us is decay,

And the world that we knew has slowly gone away?

Now that I’m on the other side

Of the last time I saw you, 

How will I know, and when is the knowing right?

And if you’ve shown up in my dreams

Does it mean you’re here with me, cause I’ve been thinking about death 

Which is really just transformation in the end

Since kneeling with your hand in mine

When they wheeled in the comfort cart,

I’ve had in mind the birdhouse outside your door, 

When in the end nature wasn’t extending for me,

And things can be both cruel and normal simultaneously.

So, are we in a new time, or is this history in rhyme?

And will the ways that we were survive as ways to be?

 It’s Getting Cosmic Now

Took his name from the one who came

Before him, gave old selves away

Now it’s mine, but I’m caught in time

What can go, and what can stay?

Walked around Watertown

Tears streamin down my face

At the time I had fallen in line

Thought it would make me safe

Can’t hold on, honey

I don’t think we’re getting old

I think that we’re getting by 

After all that we’ve been told 

I think it's both the truth and a lie

Made a home, “Travelin On the Road” 

Let him roam from week to week

And she became one and the same

After years of mirror and repeat 

I can’t wait to be stronger someday

I know I can’t live my life that way

I won’t go and I won’t be told 

Even if you will not stay

Can’t hold on, honey

I don’t think we’re getting old

I think that we’re getting by 

After all that we’ve been told 

I think it's both the truth and a lie

(And I think it’s worth asking why)

Drove them all to the hospital 

She saw them out the third floor window

Waved up high, thinking she’d get by

Two years later, he was gone too

An open port in the storm

They taught me how take in pain

Even though we’ve got all this to hold 

We don’t need any of the shame 

Can’t hold on, honey

Can’t hold on, honey

That was then and this is now    

And we’re all getting through somehow 

Yeah, it’s all getting cosmic now 

The Sun and Fun Capital of the Midwest

Back in the day

When every house just got bigger 

And each job was better than the last 

After he made it

from black and white into color 

And we wouldn’t have it any other way

Back in the day

We took our shoes off in June

And returned to the woods behind the

After she made it

From powdered milk to the the real thing

And there was no ending in sight

When he was home he was home, 

When he was home he was 

Sun and Fun! Sun and Fun! 

Without any sleep

When they poured out of the car

drove that ramshackle far as it could go

What a heavenly week 

When we lined up the cereal 

Ate every meal with plastic spoons

The pool and the creek

When it was two mothers, ten kids

And one teen age violinist in the back

When he came back from the week,

It was steaks and martinis 

And just like the Kennedys 

When he was home he was home, 

When he was home he was 

Sun and Fun! Sun and Fun! 

You dig and you find

but I am not blind

to the dangers of looking for skeletons 

They give you a chance

at finding a path 

but they don’t know the story like I do 

When he was home he was home, 

When he was home he was 

Sun and Fun! Sun and Fun!

Woman of the Future

Came to clean and cook, to sew, to wind a spool

I won’t send you to that damned Irish school 

Stoic and strong, met a man from Kilkenny

Had nine of her own Irish children 

And all the others, took them in 

Sent for the priest and said don’t ever touch my kid

And years later, took care of the man who raised her

Speak to me like this is my home 

I don’t wanna give up now

I’m not gonna let her down

I’m not gonna give up now 

Cause she was a woman of the future

Never lost faith or lost the fight 

They didn’t think you’d even make it through the night

Loss could never stop you from believing in a future

Grief had always been a part of life 

When the next one came around

Just weeks till school was out and spring had thawed the ground

Called you in - even wed, showing was a sin 

You’d never learned how to be bound 

I’m giving all I got

I am gonna make it out of the dark 

I’m gonna give it all I got 

Cause she was a woman of the future

They say it’s for better or worse

We’re just doing the worst part first

How to forgive, how to go on and live

Instead of spending the time in reverse?

I don’t wanna be brand new

Don’t need a man or an answer to get through 

She had a whole life before him, knew how to hope in mourning

How to hold on, so I can too 

I’m moving steady now

I’m learning hope is how we can be

I’m moving forward now

Cause she was a woman of the future

Yes it’s true that she looked the other way 

It’s also true, he told me that she used to say,

When you educate a man, you only teach one person

When you educate a woman, you teach the world

ORNITHOLOGY

He told me stay close

He told me stay close 

She told me stay close

She told me stay close

He told me stay close

She told me stay close

Can’t Get Lonely

Feeling the tug of the thread 

In orange and geranium red

Twenty-four homes, yeah it’s in us to roam 

AndI’ll never know what she said

But I understand each design,

And in every description and line 

I feel her now and I know somehow 

The veil’s thinning all of the time

The veil’s thinning all of the time

Can’t get lonely when I feel you near

And the birds still come and go

Can’t get lonely when I see from here

Golden Pond before the snow

In each new seed as it grows

In the drawings of your favorite clothes

In wild nude and my best navy blues 

I know I’m never alone

Now as the times twist and weave

It’s not as hard to feel so in between

Even in grief there’s a sense of relief

And I think I know what you mean 

Now I think I know what you mean

Can’t get lonely when I feel you near

And the birds still come and go

Can’t get lonely when I see from here

Golden Pond before the snow

Can’t get lonely when I feel you near

And the birds still come and go

Can’t get lonely when I see from here

Golden Pond before the snow

Can’t get lonely

And Noah is an artist

Can’t get lonely 

Go back to where you started

Go back to where you started

Family Heirloom

I am not like them

Not comin back again, take me home                   

She never said a word

Believe me I woulda heard, so it goes

You see, when times repeat

What goes on week to week, year to year

We are all a part

A broken, beating heart stuck in fear

Asking how did I not see this coming?

Goin back for more

Around and through the door one more time

Goin back for war

So it won’t hurt anymore, take what’s mine

Six feet underground

But things come back around in the end

Now we’re six feet tall

Come to know we’re all just like them

Asking how did I not see this coming?

But what if on the other side it’s a mess

And giving up is all we have left?

What if on the other side it’s a mess

And having given up is all we have left?

Well, I wanna try

I wanna try

I wanna try

I wanna try

So there’s a chance I don’t have to ask

How did I not see this coming?

See this coming

We saw this coming

Evergreen

Landed in Milwaukee

Katie got me from the airport     

Spent the morning talking in the kitchen with her mom

Wred was out there early

Shot the shit with guys who knew her

When she was Paul and dad was still alive

She knew the man digging her father’s grave 

She knew the man we had lost

Could understand the hope in a new name

Cause she knew the man

Terry told me stories 

I could see how much she loved him 

a benefit of having to fly early for the price

Said they’d been abandoned 

Politicians and their money

Well she was right, and it’s still true today

Since both of them were in it,

Getting weaker from the cancer

Katie ran the show and I was moved by her resolve

With everything they’d been through

and the timing of his passing 

I felt lucky to be there and see that grace

They knew the man, he wanted to be heard 

They knew the man 

When we all went out there

and the ashes hadn’t made it

they’d sent them to another city and replaced the urn

Carried on without ‘em

crazy wind and papers flying 

we could barely hear but Taps cut through the noise

The whole thing was uncanny

Even grandma started laughing

Everyone who knew him knew that Jim was in the air 

Looming in the distance,

a giant tree was swaying

And that moment cracked and fell along the graves

Ran down with my mother

With a strange exhilaration

We came upon another funeral service going on 

The guys who dug the gravesite

Said, “Be careful, ma'am, it’s dangerous.”

She yelled, “I need a picture, that’s my brother!”

She knew the man, he wanted the last word 

She knew the man

Now it’s just the two kids,

Though I’m notsure if they’re talking

If grief has done them in, if they’re divided on the war

Katie said she’s working 

On how not to live with anger

Maybe we can be the ghosts for them instead

She knew the man, knew him in all the pain 

She knew the woman who followed 

Took care of them, all through their last days

She knew them 

Live, Laugh, Change Your Mind

Only one left, she wants to go:

“God, why won’t you take me to heaven?”

Been thinking bout death and I wanna know 

What I give away twenty four seven

And if I’m not living my life, how I could change my min

I know, I know it’s darkest, then light

And true that we take it for granted 

but how dark is darkest, how bad is the fight

in unearthing what all we have planted?

She said, in a way I’ll be glad the day that I leave this world

If starting over is sort of like death

Then I get why we cling to illusion

Back is no better than holding my breath

Seeing red never was a solution

What’s it take for us to behave like we want out of the dark?

Thinking how wild to know

That you are ready to go

Will I be?

When I’m crossing over

When I’m crossing over 

When I’m crossing over

When I’m crossing over 

When we’re crossing over

When we’re crossing over