Time

Written/composed from: Feb 98 Jan 03 Nov 07 Nov 10

In response to all of the abandoned farm houses I have passed either on foot or by car around Aotearoa New Zealand. Who were the people who lived there? What happened to them?

 

Up atop the mountain, looking out across the valley,

is a cottage built so many years ago

To reach it follow mountain tracks that twist and turn and double back,

and tell a tale only the traveler knows.

 

The energy that brought you here was of the same that toiled here

to cut a path up through this wilderness.

That carried logs and planks of wood, all things to build a home so good,

to make a life up high upon this crest.

 

Yet now there stands in front of you a fallen shrine to a point of view.

Foundations of a world now lost in time.

A chimney stack, a fallen wall, a window frame with no view at all,

fragments from a long forgotten life.

 

And walking through the rubble you bend over to discover,

a broken mirror that when rubbed it shines.

And as your fingers wrap around it you look up to be astounded,

as you find a woman by your side.

 

You watch her as she lived her life without her man, who lost his life,

fighting in a war so far away.

She struggles hard to keep her home, to forget the fact she is alone,

for tomorrow it must be a better day.

 

But those times were not a friend to her; they worked to be the death of her

and buried she lies watching for the sun.

Around her lies a monument, to all her life and what it meant,

and how time comes to forget everyone.

 

Instrumental

  

Yes the only thing that passes through the doorway and the broken view,

is time as it will be forever more.

And time will slow and watch you grieve,

then pass on again as your memory leaves,

and time will close another opened door,

just like it has so many times before.

 

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