Dear seven sisters, all is distance here all look into never out of every face I’ll let you be my belief if I can be your doubt signed from Persia: Kind subversions of a kind I couldn’t say as our blessed lack of conversation has kept me alive so far today
All my savings soon were spent, so in the vales of early Fall under tables covered rent by packing bales of barely straw with efforts held to circumvent the watchful eye of federal law
And mama though I’ve been so alone, my faith in love is still devout!
With solemn sounds and the potter’s ground beneath our bare wandering feet our crooked hearts in Sacred Harp sang out the dark inside us deep their shapes of sorrow fell like shadows on the farm-to-market roads that led my stumbling steps back home
But mama why four fires burning? Why so quiet Father’s room? Has he not heard his son returning? or has he gone to gather food? or is he off stomping 'round the forest? or has he wandered into town?
"Son, I think it’s best that you sit down– His faith in love was still devout."
Mama sing my favorite hymn as I sink deep into the grass and the night birds beat me with their wings with a hard laughter as they pass the stage goes dim its pageants finished fleeting worlds to which I’ve clung with a now extinguished longing
Mama sing my favorite hymn where we make ploughshares from our swords and the mason’s barber trims our Christmas tree in the oneness of our Lord what grace surrounds! what strange perfection! Mama sing my favorite hymn