Living Legacy
(Note: I was listening to seventies music -_-0 and I came across
this song. It’s called “Leader of the Band” and was sung by Dan Fogelberg, so
it’s not mine though I use a few lyrics. The lyrics are italicized)
Shifting from one place to another like a movie changing its
scenes
The dusty, warm trail that led to your home
You walked away from it and landed in this sometimes freezing tomb
Sometimes burning furnace
The weather always changes but you are here
Far from the dusty, warm trail that led to home
A quiet man of physique, denied a simpler fate
Where do you go? Where should you start?
Anyone else would have turned around and hid
Hid back at home where it was safe, where they belonged
Yet you moved forward as if you were charging through a hurricane
The winds pushed you
You pushed back
And in the end, you walked out of that storm
Without a stain
And his heart was known to none
You built your life in this strange world
Learned what you couldn’t learn at home
You did nothing but learn
As the sun went down and sugar-white snow rested
Upon the windowpane
Becoming the example that hard work and struggle
Eventually paid you back
And he gave to me a gift I know I never can repay
I look at myself in that mirror everyday
I only see me
Nothing special and nothing extraordinary
Yet I’m your offspring
The child of someone great and unknown
Who has failed to be as wonderful and bright as the man you were
Drowning, drowning, drowning
In a sea of misery, which is all my hard work gave me
I cannot breathe and sometimes I want curl up
Curl up and fade into the darkness
He earned his love through discipline
I want to go into eternity where I will find you
Sometimes, I get tired of living
I pretend I am you though the world knows I’m fooling myself
But how else can I be like you?
I’m nothing more than your offspring
Swirled up in confusion, wanting answers
Something you have never faced with
I step up and slip back down
Cause I try so hard to become
Someone I will never see again
My life has been a poor attempt
To imitate the man
I was never there when you left your home so long ago
I never saw you walk down that dusty, warm trail
I was proud, I never witnessed it but I was proud of you
There was no other way I could talk about how great you were
How great you could have been
And all the wonderful things you will never be
So instead of wishing for the night to fall over me like a veil
I write of you.
I write what I remember and what I will never see
It’s my only way of preserving your memories
It’s the only way everyone else will know
The person behind the poet and every poem that poet wrote
They aren’t the best but they are a start
I thank you for the kindness
And the times when you got tough
And Papa, I don’t think I said
“I love you” near enough
And maybe, one day, the whole world will understand this poem
One way or another, I will show them
That the real superstar of our family’s drama
…was you
I am the living legacy
To the leader of the band
Copyright 2002: CT
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Email me: sweetandsourcyanide@excite.com