The pine trees are swaying like they used to do
When the world was as simple as a buck and a view
You taught me to track where the moss meets the stone
And told me a man never walks truly alone
I still see your hands on the handle of the axe
Leaving a trail of the heavy wood stacks
We’d sit by the embers as the embers turned grey
And talk about things we’d get done the next day.
I can still feel the spray of the lake on my face
Watching the line as it moved through the space
Between the boat and the bank where the big ones would hide
I was ten years old with the world on my side
You were building a life with a hammer and nail
While teaching me how not to fear when I fail
Every joint that we set, every board that we laid
Was a piece of a foundation that’ll never quite fade.
Then the world tilted over in the blink of an eye
No time for a prayer or a proper goodbye
At forty-eight years, you were just in your prime
But a leak in the brain took the rest of our time
I was nineteen and standing on the edge of the dark
While the fire went out from the very first spark
Now there’s a hole in the house that we started to build
And a space in the woods that can never be filled.
I missed you at twenty when I didn’t know the way
I missed you last Tuesday on a quiet spring day
I wanted to ask how to fix up the sink
Or sit on the porch for a slow, steady drink
I missed the advice on the girl I should marry
And the weight of the burdens I’m trying to carry
There are memories unwritten and stories untold
In the years that you never got the chance to grow old.
I go to the woods when the pressure gets high
And look for your ghost in the gray of the sky
I’m building the things that we talked about then
But I’m doing the work of two separate men
I’ll teach my own son how to cast out the line
And tell him the heart of his grandpa was mine
Though the hemorrhage took you before we were through
I’m spending my life being a memory of you.