My father was the last man
At the funeral
Even the priest left first
He stood down by the water
Until we reached for him
Sisters and brothers
Are for comforting each other
And my father
He drove back alone
What’s life like
The night after a fight
When the fight’s burned out
For good
I drove by
Every church in town
And couldn’t find
A reason
To believe
My buddy had a kid
And my buddy’s kid was early
But the kid’s going
To do alright
Some get lucky
Some get screwed
Just depends on the night
Why didn’t my father
Walk into the water
And baptize himself again?
He was never so
Alone in his life
His wife in the ground
And his kids too old
To understand
The value of him
Pull back, pull back
Pull back from the shore
The priest can’t bless you
The way you need
My father still sits
On his white front porch
Thinking summer
Never goes on this long
He tells himself
He’ll only have two seasons left
But one season’s gotta end
Before he’ll find himself
With a reason
To believe
I find myself
Repeating the words
That my mother used to say
In her sick
She’d tell us all
How hard her life was
And how proud she was
To make it through
There she was
At the end of the line
Finally giving herself
The credit she was denied
Once she could be proud
She didn’t need
A reason
To believe
After the funeral
We took dad out
To his
Favorite place to eat
The waitress flirted with him
And my sister raged
But it put a smile
On his face
The night after the storm
Is always the warmest
No matter how bad
The storm
Left you
If you sit in a storm
After it’s gone
Your whole life’s
Gonna be
A storm
I hugged my sister
Just to get her to laugh
And my brother
Offered to order
For my dad
And my younger sister
Told us
She’s moving back
To town
Four dumb kids
And their old man
At a diner
Outside town
None of us
Are gonna die rich
And none of us
Are gonna live long
But we were given to each other
And we’re all starting
To look like
Our mother
Seems like a reason
To believe
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