SLAUGHTER MOUNTAIN 2007 - SLAUGHTER MOUNTAIN

SLAUGHTER MOUNTAIN

My mom’s dad was a coal miner. Her mother died of TB when she was a kid. When she was twelve, her dad, dying of black lung, slit his throat with a butcher knife. That left her with a cripple little brother to take care of and a bunch of big brothers and sisters to take care of her.

When I come to the end of that old dirt road
where the berries all grow on the fence and the
trail wanders down to the water’s edge
and the footprints of all her old friends.

She told John, once, if she hadn’t stuck with her guns as often as she did, she wouldn’t have been right as often as she was.. So, he put that on a piece of paper and framed it and hung it on the wall so we could all remember her strategy in life.

And tho I follow in the footsteps of my friends and the road I walk down has been tramped into stone, the tears that I cry will have been turned into dust and my life will pass like a shadow into the shade.

Where the crickets are fiddling at midnight and the toad frogs all sing to the moon, all the grasshoppers listening and smiling and the coyotes howling the tune.

When I come to the end of life’s journey and I’m facing my last setting sun, it’s “Good-bye” to this old worn out body and the hope for a shiny new one.

(C) 2007 Royal T Music