The Night John Prine Died
The pink full moon rose over the pandemic
singing through the tree, “Hello in there. Hello.”
We listened, all children grown old, but always
looking for something to hold onto, even angels
of the old rivers of our heart’s journeys,
grown wilder in their holiness, forcing new channels
like the holy is prone to do, especially when everything
changes. What is there to do but stand here,
willing peaceful waters to calm us, sometime
in the future as if that’s where paradise lay?
But John Prine knew there’s a hole in the world.
We can just see it now while time changes us,
if we’re true, into souvenirs of this life,
talismans of something precious and lasting
beneath the tree of forgiveness the moon climbs.
Come on home, come on home, come on home.
Like many of us around the world, I adored and revered John Prine, one of the greatest of the great songwriters, musicians, singers, and mensches. WIth great gratitude to him, I used a word or short phrase from the following songs: “Hello in There,” “Paradise,” “Lake Marie,” “Angel from Montgomery,” “Sam Stone,” “Souvenirs,” and “Long Monday.”
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