Hey there, little darlin', there's something that you should know, This thing is gonna outlive us all, This thing, it won't let us go. Gonna take us down to nothin'. Gonna eat us from the inside out. And hey, little darlin', I don't want you feelin' the fallout.
When the cancer finally took him, I was watchin' the trucks pull in. Me and your daddy, we had a job under the ground minin' uranium. Now some things your daddy leaves you. Some things he don't. Some things are gonna be here anyhow, And some things just won't.
Now one thing I want you to understand is you don't gotta be no mining man. I curse the day that I went down and I pulled that shit out of the ground.
Now we were living over in Nevada. That's where your people come from. Grandma would take me and your daddy on down to the gunnery range. We'd sit and watch the bombs blow. And when the sun goes down, All them colors runnin' like painted desert, And you get to see it now.
And government boys had something so damn secret they had to hide it in the desert sand. Out there the sky's so big, and there ain't no mistaking Who's got the winning hand.
Now I've been all the way to Alaska, to a town they call Point Hope, Where they took some of what we got down here just to see how it would grow.
I hear the lichen bought it, now it's running through the caribou; and I say to you, little darlin', now you get to feel it, too.