Buffalo

©1998 Andrew Calhoun, recorded on Where Blue Meets Blue

I was listening to Erin Corday's "Secret About the World" CD, doing Tai Chi in the front room at 6134 Talman in Chicago. She has a song starts,
"Saddle up the Subaru
Pick me up at 5 AM
Pack a change of heart
And bring your glow in the dark pen
all the way down the mountain. "

I'd never think of rhyming "pen" with mountain, and that wonderful rhyme scheme in the first verse. Two rhymes in the last line, Loudon Wainwright does it in a song called "Thick and Thin." So I thought, "Grandpa drew the mountain with a fountain pen," and had the vision of this guy, in Switzerland, remote, he's a crazy artist and his wife is crazy about him. And the rest of this poured forth. An antidote to futility.

Mama was a wizard
Her howls shouted down by snow
She bore me walking naked through a blizzard
And hitch-hiked home on a buffalo
Daddy was a gunman
Shot the armadillo in the neck
Took my brother and sister with him
Into the shadow of a valley of a car-wreck
Have no shame
Teardrops wash away in rain
Keep your silence like the snow
Falling on a buffalo

Grandad carved a hill in wood
In the shadow of the mountain
Stayed out longer than he should
With a quill and ink to sketch the morning
Grandma made a casserole
Of rice and corn and bits of bacon
Shook our sheets out in the morning
That blew the way her heart was taken
Have no shame
Teardrops wash away in rain
Keep your silence like the snow
Falling on a buffalo

Broken down upon my path
I surrender, I surrender
I never saw the grass grow tall
Enough to hide my worn suspenders
I'll be naked in the morning
I'll be crying out for you
From the sunlit side of lookout mountain
Nipping through the shadows too
And I'll walk like mother on my path
Seek my sister from the clay
Come to call my father brother
Show my son the same old way
Oh Grandfather, hear me howling
From a hill you carved in tree
Here's your purpose, long forgotten
Where your name's a memory
Here's my shadow on that mountain
Full of Grandma's recipe
Rice and corn and bits of bacon
Hungry hearts, come sup with me
Have no shame
Teardrops wash away in rain
Keep your silence like the snow
Falling on a buffalo