Song in First Person

I sit waiting for the train to pass; looking at the commemorative plaque,
Something about the first steam engine in Tennessee in eighteen fifty,
I wonder someday if all our achievements will be seen as mere mistakes,
As we create a thousand victims and one planet for every single beneficiary,
But some days I’m so full of love I can see the beauty in every ugly little
detail,
Most days so full of rage I can barely see at all,
I just feel a little forsaken I guess; much like most everyone else,
Which leads to forsaken by whom; and I always dismiss every answer that comes
to mind,
Yet I know the answer is; this land; this America; this work.
I drive down Jefferson street there is a house that is no more than a broken
down shack,
A women in the front lawn trimming the hedges as if it were the work of the
lord,
I smile and it sends a shiver down my spine and I’m not really sure why,
It’s just like Springsteen said people always find some reason to believe,
They continue to believe even when their back is broken by the wheel of their
labor,
I have seen people struggle; win; lose; and even watched them die,
I have stood at their sides; shaken their hands; and nearly broke down when
they confessed their fear,
Strangers yet brothers; I’ve always been so unplugged; but oh how I have felt
connected,
It’s a vapor like realization of equality that brings out this true compassion,
But it can be so hard in the face of all the petty little indecencies,
People pull off these little games of advantage that won’t do half the good and
twice the damage, And I don’t really know my place in all this except maybe to
sing this song,
But as I sit trying to frame all this in words I think how the calculation of
art can seem so cold,
But I truly feel somehow warmed by it all; though many days I struggle to
remember this,
And I’m no patriot; this is simply my home; America land of opportunity and
doom,
I may never be a believer but I will get up every morning and lay my fingers on
the pulse of this land.