South December Road

That old brown house is haunted

said the young boys in the road

who threw stones through faceless windows

as the sky filled up with snow

I watched them from a taxi

And the driver said of course

That one time late at night he'd seen

a young girl on the porch

And it must have been a ghost he laughed

I shivered in the cold

and the snowflakes fell like ancient tears

on South December Road

Something in my heart remembered

long forgotten sins

as they echo through those empty rooms

and scatter in the wind

There's a branch that's barely hangin

from a dying chestnut tree

and it sways before the window where

your bedroom used to be

And I drove the old man's Plymouth

through the tired Midwestern snow

and you met me on the corner down

on South December Road

Now that drug store up on Main Street

has that sign above the door

they've been satisfying customers

since 1934

We drank cherry flavored cola's there

when we were seventeen

but that soda fountain's gone now

so a bought a magazine

And I walked down toward the graveyard

as the wind began to blow

and I stumbled across the headstone

nearly buried in the snow

And your face filled up my memory

and a phantom filled my soul

like the cracks that filled the sidewalk down

on South December Road