Scribbles

"She loved her brother.
I remember back when he was fixin' up a '49 Indian.
He told her, 'Little sister, gonna ride the wind
up around the moon and back again.'
He never got farther than Vietnam.
I was standin' there with her when the telegram come for Lillian —
now he's lyin' somewhere about a million miles from Meridian."

Red Dirt Girl · Emmylou Harris

"And oh, oh-oh, them Indian Scouts, man, they're built for speed
and oh, oh-oh, they said he hit that guard rail at half-past three.
Lit up those streets that never sleep when the sky goes dark.
We buried him out in the wind, 'neath the West Coast stars.
Out where the wild things are."

Where the Wild Things Are · Luke Combs

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Those Winter Sundays · Robert Hayden