Prodigal

In the beginning we were banished And then we stoked the fires Scrapped our songs for salvage Built a funeral pyre Watched it sinking slowly In the reverberating depths Knelt along the shoreline And held our hands to our faces as we wept We were boxes full of broken hearts En route to empty business parks Where they set us down Out past the exit signs and scattered glass The highway tore our hearts in half At the edge of town We found this failed city project A couple acres cleared to build some kind of complex Their tools tore up the ground but they had to halt their progress When their funds ran out, packed up and cut their losses There it lay in all it's glory We took our refuge in the shelter of the quarry You'd bring your dad's guitar and swipe a couple forties We'd pass them back and forth and sing each other stories We'd gather there from far and wide In the towering shade And the quarrywould contain the cries That our voices made With our echoes ringing out until I could hardly hear If I close my eyes and stand real still Would I disappear? We'd spend our days composing eulogies To everything we used to be Before the crash And our nights performing song and dance For some celestial audience We swore they'd clap And with laughter Arielle recited sonnets Each line well rehearsed Shortly after Darian would quote them scripture Chapter and verse Through the dust we saw it rising up before us A pathway through the hurt We looked around and found these rock walls were a fortress That we built with nothing but our words We'd duck down when we heard the sound And the machines drew near So sure that we could wait them out Till the coast was clear We could hear the engines throb and hum In a distant din But we swore that day would never come When the dirt poured in So with our stories finally spent We began to roam Could wander forty years and yet Never find our home We'll crawl upon our hands and knees And embrace this curse As prodigals and refugees In the wasted earth --- Prodigal - David Wirsig