Passing Afternoon

I can barely hear this beautiful song without tearing up. It cuts pretty close to the bone of my own life...of coming into the autumn of it...of what it meant to me to give life and have my children small and dependent upon me...of trying to teach them something...of allowing them to grow up and then letting go...of plans made and swept away....of youth fading...of hopes lingering.....of wanting to achieve a sort of perfection in the blinding beauty of it all....and of growing old.

Passing Afternoon

(Iron & Wine lyrics)

There are times that walk from you
Like some passing afternoon
Summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon

And she chose a yard to burn
But the ground remembers her
Wooden spoons, her children stir her Bougainvillea blooms

There are things that drift away
Like our endless numbered days
Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made

And she's chosen to believe
In the hymns her mother sings
Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves

There are sailing ships that pass
All our bodies in the grass
Springtime calls her children until she lets them go at last

And she's chosen where to be
Though she's lost her wedding ring
Somewhere near her misplaced jar of Bougainvillea seeds

There are things we can't recall
Blind as night that finds us all
Winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls

But my hands remember hers
Rolling around the shaded ferns
Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned

There are names across the sea
Only now I do believe
Sometimes, with the window closed, she'll sit and think of me

But she'll mend his tattered clothes
And they'll kiss as if they know
A baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone