Lay Of The Last Survivor

She went out and found her father

face down on the ground

out in the cold.

She walked her way around a hill

with the sun sinking

down into the snow.

All the whitecaps of the waves

slap like last handclaps,

and the dark water dies in a crash,

is sucked back with a moan.

And the smoke on the coast --

oh, piled fathers,

soft, sighing daughters,

where does it go?

--

It's a dream, now, that I'll describe:

let your mind drift on down, like so,

to when the world was young.

A big sky, blue of a dead bachelor's tongue.

A new bloom on the rose.

So some line someone told says

even light can get old.

There's a girl, she unfolds in her cell all alone

and stands, and beats her hands,

and stares, and gasps and chokes,

and the air scrapes her throat --

Oh, slobbering lovers,

drink-clinking brothers,

they don't have to tell us, because we know.

--

What a way down.

What a ride.

What a slide spin-around.

What a life to have known.

What a time, and how I was singing out

in a crowd of the thousand

most frightening faces I've known

and when the lighthouse

lending us sight finally went out,

what a fright we felt

in that night, friends.

Let's just shout it out,

all the whys and don't knows,

all the cries in our throats,

and how right we felt,

with our eyes tightly closed,

holding something we broke --

and then, whimpering sisters,

sobbing well wishers,

it's over. Just let my hand go.