NO ROOM IN THE INN

by Marvin Payne

         “Grandmother, why are you smiling?” Ezra’s feet hurt, and they still had so many  miles to walk. Ezra didn’t think anyone on this dusty road should be smiling. Nobody else was.

         “I smile because the sun is shining and the breeze is cool and we are strong enough to walk, my son.” Grandmother always called Ezra “my son.”

         “Is that reason enough to smile?” Ezra asked.

         “Perhaps not. Sometimes there are reasons for smiling that we don’t know.” And they walked on.

         “Grandmother, why are we walking?”

         “We walk, my son, because the Emperor far away across the sea has commanded us to walk”

         “Why?”

         “Because he’s gathering everyone in our land to the towns where their families came from.”

         “Why?”

         “So his men can count us and take our money.”

         “Why?”

         “To buy food and swords for his armies.”

         “Is that reason enough for us to walk?” Ezra asked.

         “The Emperor thinks so,” she answered, “but sometimes there are reasons to walk that even he doesn’t know.” And they walked on.

         “Grandmother, why are you singing?” Nobody else on the road was singing. His grandmother’s way of singing was to hum very softly, with a word or two of old prayers creeping in. As she sang, she sometimes closed her eyes, even when she walked.

         “My son, I sing because God loves me.”

         “Is that reason enough to sing?”

         She stopped. “Oh yes, my son!” Her eyes were bright. Ezra could almost feel them shining on him. She walked again. After another step or two, she said, “And Ezra...”

         She called him “Ezra.” She must have had something very important to say.

         “Yes, Grandmother?”

         “There are reasons I don’t know.”

         “For singing?” Ezra asked.

         “No, for God loving me.” And she walked on, singing.

         They walked, and walked, and walked, and came long after dark to the tiny town of Grandmother’s grandfathers. It was overflowing with all the distant relatives of the few folk who still lived in it. Now even Grandmother was tired. And there was, as they should have expected, no room for them in the inn.

         But the innkeeper didn’t turn them away. For days, he had been preparing his large stables, hanging blankets between its many stalls and lofts and corners. He let the animals wander in the mild night, so there would be pretend rooms he could rent to weary guests.

         Ezra and his grandmother spread out some straw on the rutted floor. She leaned on his shoulder and folded her tough old bones and lay them down on the straw.

         “Grandmother, why do we have to sleep in a stable?”

         She was too tired for much of an answer. The smile was gone, and the singing, too. She closed her eyes and said, “My son, sometimes there are reasons we don’t know.” In just a moment or two, Ezra heard a weary little snore from under her blanket.

         Ezra tried to sleep, too. But a couple was quarreling in the loft overhead. Off in the other end of the stable somewhere a toddler whined. Against the boards separating Ezra from the next stall an old man was muttering in his sleep.

         Still, the boy was so tired that he barely heard the low, quick whispering as one more young couple came in out of the night. The husband swept straw into a pile. He eased his wife stiffly down against it. She hurt. Ezra could tell. Something was wrong. Ezra was tired.

         A few cows shifted and clumped outside in the starlight. One cow, from her steady moaning, seemed offended that her particular stall was taken over by a dirty-faced runt with only two feet. Dirty-faced Ezra finally sank into sleep through the stubborn sounds washing around him.         

         Deep in the night he woke up a little, as his grandmother groaned and knelt to lie down again on the straw next to him.

         “Grandmother, why were you up?” he mumbled.

         “Someone needed help, my son.”

         “Help with what, Grandmother?”

         “Getting born.”

         “Getting born? That’s... that’s reason enough to get up!”

         She smiled into his sleepy eyes and added, softly “Reason enough for everything.” Then she whispered, “Look!”

         Ezra leaned up on an elbow and blinked between the boards. Just beyond lay a young woman, really just a girl. Her hair hung damp and her face was pale--but oh, so lovely as she gazed on a gurgling baby, minutes old. Her husband was farther off, kicking straw out into the night and gathering more from a manger.

         Ezra drifted again into sleep, imagining the most amazing music on the wind.

©2008 by Marvin Payne

Released!

Spent the last few weeks almost constantly in the studio. Got some kind help from the Celtic band Annie's Romance, fiddler Liz Manwaring, sax player Scott Dalton, and angelic singers Sandra Katzenbach and Marci Johnson. Really enjoyed laying tracks with my kind-of-new mandolin--first time I've recorded with one. So grateful for all who supported the production of this piece with pre-sales and otherwise.

Here it is:
http://www.marvinpayne.com/index.php/store/browse-the-cds-a-mp3s?view=album&album=29

FOR CHRISTMAS, 2012

We've adjusted to "the new normal" with regard to my wife's health, 

these songs have lived and breathed and been audience-tested for a year, 

and public interest in this project has reached the "tipping point." 

Click on the guitar to find out how to 

make this happen!

The CD will be completed and made available by Christmas of 2012 if all goes well in the studio, assuredly by January of 2013. Below is a snapshot as of today:

What the songs will say -

I’ve had hope on my mind and in my heart a lot in these days. A number of trusted friends have been hearing hope in my songs, and have asked me to build a CD around hope. 

How the songs will sound -

A guy and his guitar, acoustic, with a little help from his friends. Simple, like if you were there. My son Dave (the heart of many popular bands) is developing ideas for the string bass, and his brother Joshua (chances are you’ve heard him often--highly innovative jazz man) has been playing rich arch-top guitar voices behind my more folk-based Martin rhythms. 

The list of songs as of 19 November 2012 -

Roses and Hope 

This one was finished 9 June 2011.

“Roses and hope are milk and honey for the soul.

Love and believing always makes the broken whole.

You cry for comfort out along the stony slope.

I can give you roses. He can give you hope.”

Mother of Oceans

Begun June 9, finished 20 July 2011. My valentine to the planet..

“Mother of oceans, mother of cloud,

mother of mountains, awesome and proud,

mother of thunder, mother of rain,

mother of hope and the song in the grain.”  

Tender Mercies

My dear friend and frequent creative partner, Roger Hoffman, wrote the much-loved song "Consider the Lilies."

It's helped a lot of people. That one inspired this one. Finished 16 June 2011.

“Tender mercies fall like rain.

Showers of grace embrace my pain.

Tender mercies heal my day,

steal my troubles and tears away.”

Dumb As a Hammer

Finished 17 July 2011. This is how I often feel. This how I often want to be. It will be apparent that Isaiah is my collaborator on this one. 

“I am a sword, beat me flat into a blade to plow the gound.

I am a spear, bend my head to prune the barren branches  down.

I am a saw, shake my teeth against the idols in the land.

Make me dumb as a hammer in your hand.”

Hope Has Wings

A free adaptation of Emily Dickinson's "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers," set to a driving treatment of the “Goin’

Home” tune by Antonin Dvorak.

“...sweetest in the gale she’s heard,

and sore must be the storm

that might dismay this little bird

that’s kept so many warm.”

Hope, Like Smoke

Finished 21 July 2011. I tried to suggest the ephemeral nature of hope. This is a descant written to ride atop a tune

composed in the 1700s by a blind Celtic harpist named Turlough O’Carolan.

“Hope, like smoke, is a fair, fragile thing,

a vapor, a shade of heartbreaking.

Hope is thin as a butterfly wing

when the thunder and lightning are shaking.”

Something Like a Rose

Robert Burns gave us the timeless song "My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose." I was reminded of that song as I pondered

the theme of this project, and wrote this song instead on the morning of 25 July 2011.

“Something like a rose, but so much sweeter,

something so much lovelier than those,

So much more than roses do I need her.

My love is only something like a rose.”

If You’re There     

Written in the spring of 2011 by my long-time friend and frequent collaborator, Melanie Hoffman, for little children to

sing--but I heard it and loved it for myself. It makes me feel like the child I really am.

“When I make mistakes, please try to see

Who I really am when you look at me.

There’s so much that I can be,

If you’re there...”

The Answer            

Suggested 28 July 2011 by the final scene in the play "The Trail of Dreams," this is a radical theological concept I believe in.

“If you want love, you’ll get love.

If you want peace, you’ll get peace.

If you want children to cherish and dance with,

you’ll get all you can hold of these--

all you can hold of these.”

If You Leave Me        

In mid-September 2011, my wife was temporarily untabernacled. She's back now, and of course there’s a song.

”If you leave me, wait ‘til November.

That’s the season when the beauties fall.

Maybe that autumn wind

will chill your skin, and my arms might be your shawls,

and warm with me,

you might not leave at all.”

Distracted

Roses and Hope is not dead, only sleeping. Well, not actually sleeping--more like standing wide-eyed with abated breath, wondering if it will live or die. It will live. I just got distracted by the temporary un-tabernacling of my wife. She's back now, and of course there's a song.

If you leave me, wait 'til tomorrow.
It's not easy to watch you fly.
Maybe the light of dawn
will fall upon the tears I try to hide,
and you might stay
and we won't say goodbye.


If you leave me, wait 'til November.
That's the season when the beauties fall.
Maybe that autumn wind
will chill your skin, and my arms might be your shawls,
and warm with me,
you might not leave at all.


If you love me, wait 'til forever,
and Heaven's breezes kiss your faithful eyes.
After the pain is gone
we'll travel on, your wings entwined with mine--
and still in love, we'll rise above the skies.

My Heart's in the Highlands

I'm playing in a Celtic band called "Annie's Romance." With any luck, I'll get them on the Roses and Hope CD. All these pipes and whistles have put me in a Celtic mood. There is a deeply beloved song called "My Heart's In the HIghlands," written by Robert Burns in 1789. It's sung to many different tunes--I heard one this morning all on one note. (It was one of the less interesting interpretations.) The words open with "My heart's in the highlands. My heart is not here. My heart's in the highlands, a-chasin' the deer." My eleven-year-old daughter Caitlin brought this piece home from her children's choir and we were both so intrigued with that imagery that we let our creative spirits run wild.

My heart's in the highlands 
where breezes are pure.
My kidneys are wandrin'
out over the moor.


My heart's in the highlands
and raisin' a fuss,
last seen on the high road
a-chasin' a bus.


     So you take the high road
     and I'll take the lower.
     My heart's in the highlands--
     I miss it so sore.


My heart's in the highlands,
my ears are in Spain.
I'll never see all of
my pieces again.


My heart's in the highlands,
my teeth are in Rome.
I long to have all of
my body parts home.


     So you take the high road
     and I'll take the lower.
     My heart's in the highlands--
     I miss it so sore.

Unlike Robert Burns, I've never actually been to the highlands of Scotland. Two years before he penned his impulsive and passionate words, he finally went there and stayed a whole month.

Should I put in on the CD?

More Feathers (poem becomes lyric)

I haven't been able to get this Emily Dickinson "Feathers" poem out of my head. In an earlier post I contrasted her confidence with my caution, but what she says rings so true that I have to include it on the CD. I guess we can feel differently about hope on different days--let the listener choose. The poem is clean, spare, and potent. But it doesn't sing so well (or, at least, I can't sing it well). At first I was hesitant to mess with a single syllable, but then took the plunge. It will be credited as "recklessly adapted from Emily Dickinson."


For anybody who might take an interest in the process, here's how it went. First, the poem:


Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--but not the words, 
And never stops at all,


And sweetest in the gale is heard,
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.


I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity
It asked a crumb of me.


The meaning is perfectly clear at the first reading--the complexity is in the layers of feelings, choices, and implications. But it's not so clear at first hearing, especially when there's the distraction of music. One of my weaknesses as a songwriter is that I get caught up in the poetry of what I write and easily slip-slide away from the requirement to communicate immediately and directly. I don't remember who said "A lyric should be a letter, not a poem," but I think they're right. (It can be a poetic letter).


I'd be hard-pressed to find a single flaw in Miss Dickinson's poem, but here are a couple of challenges it presents as lyric. The opening line is rhythmically irregular, not like other lines. It ends in what they call "a feminine foot," in that the last syllable is the unstressed one. Every other line ends in "a masculine foot." The last syllable is the stressed one. This poetic unit, two syllables with the second syllable stressed, is also called an "iamb" and is characteristic of most of the lines that Shakespeare wrote. "And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." It feels real natural in English. I think Dickinson wrote her first line irregularly on purpose, in order to say "Okay, this notion is a little strange, but is the central image of this thought, so stick with me." (Also, she usually gets a lot of music out of variations both in rhythm and rhyme.)


['Scuse me for a minute--I have to get an impossible dress onto a doll. Or maybe the doll is impossible. Anyway, the combination is near enough to impossible... Back again.]


So I had to "regularize" the first line. I wound up with


Hope has wings. Self-assured,
it perches in the soul...


"Self-assured" was for two reasons, to regulate the line and to rhyme with "words" coming up. Trouble was, I'd chosen to set this to the tune of Dvorak's Largo from the New World Symphony ("Goin' Home," the funeral song) and the second set of three syllables had to be as strong as the first. "Self-assured" is a little clunky--therefore weak. Well, I had this new "wings" element. In the third line I had a "sings," albeit in the wrong place. So, recklessly adapting away, I got this stanza:


Hope has wings, feathered things. 
It perches in the soul 
and never words, but music sings, 
and never stops at all.

Dickinson's third line is clearer than this adaptation, but I had to have the rhyme. 

In the second stanza, I thought I ought to find a more accessible word than "abash" (which I love in the poem).

Sweetest in the gale it's heard, 
and sore must be the storm 
that might dismay this little bird 
that kept so many warm.


("Might" sings more clearly than "could" and I reckoned it was close enough in meaning.)


"In extremity" is too much to ask a modern listener to grab on the way by. Addressing that challenge involved a new rhyme and some re-ordering of the last line.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
and on the strangest sea;
yet starving, it would not demand
a single crumb of me.

The poet ended her piece right there. I had to reprise some of the language, just to have enough for a song. Also, this bird began being literal enough to me to have a gender. So here's the lyric as it stands. Hear it to the "Goin' Home" tune, but in a much quicker 6/8 (much too lively for a funeral).

Hope has wings, feathered things. 

She perches in the soul.

She has no words--still she sings, 

and never stops at all.

Sweetest in the gale she's heard, 

and sore must be the storm 

that might dismay this little bird 

that's kept so many warm.

I've heard her in the chillest land,
and on the strangest sea;
yet starving, she would not demand
a single crumb of me.

Hope has wings, feathered things. She perches in the soul.

She has no words--still she sings, and never stops at all.

(Instrumental Bridge)


I've heard her in the chillest land,
and on the strangest sea;
yet starving, she would not demand
a single crumb of me.

Sweetest in the gale she’s heard, and sore must be the storm  
that might dismay this little bird that’s kept so many warm--

this faithful friend, this little bird that’s kept so many warm.


All of Dickinson's choices are right. I hope some of mine are. It's heady company.

Singing the Songs

I realized a couple of days ago that spending time with these songs, whether writing, rehearsing, or sharing them, is nourishing my spirit. I've been "dumb as a hammer" during much of the process, but now I get to see and enjoy what's been getting pounded into shape. The creative work continues--nearly all the lyrics below have been tinkered with, and the musical forms are still fluid.

Friends and fans around the country (all the fans are friends) have been discussing the songs with me, and all they have is the words! They've been comparing, exploring, expressing appreciation and anticipation and support. That's felt good.

Now I'm stuck in the mode of the work in which I'm less confident, the fundraising. But there have been some sweet moments. Last night I sang about half these songs to a kind family whose support I was was courting. In the shade of their pines, in view of the Alpine mountains, with their newly born goats bleating on the hillside, I found myself thinking, "Wait! This isn't about gathering bucks to enable sharing these songs--this is sharing these songs!" As always, while the music is going I forget about the paycheck. Still, I'm several thousand dollars away from being able to share these songs on a wide scale. About seven. Thousand dollars.

I have a rehearsal tomorrow morning with my sons. We haven't been together for several weeks because one of them's been touring the West with one of his bands and the other had an extended gig in France. These were the weeks when most of this stuff was written. I'm excited to pass out some music and see what they bring to the songs.

What You Want

Can't turn it off. I posted the previous piece and meant to go to sleep. Instead, the following came, driven by the final scene in the play "The Trail of Dreams." It took us two-and-a-half hours and twenty actors to say it there--let's see if one guy can get it down to three minutes.

THE ANSWER

If you want love, you’ll get love.

If you want peace, you’ll get peace.

If you want children to cherish and dance with,

you’ll get all you can hold of these--

all you can hold of these.

If you want truth, you’ll get truth.

If you want friends, you’ll get friends.

If you want music as wild as the wind blows,

you’ll get songs that will never end--

songs that will never end.

   And when they ask you what you want,

   and you struggle to reply,

   it makes no dif’rence what you say,

   we have answered with our lives.

If you want sun, you’ll get sun.

If you want shade, you’ll get shade.

If you would sleep in the hills of the westlands,

you will rest and not be afraid--

rest and not be afraid.

If you want sand, you’ll get sand.

If you want sea, you’ll get sea.

You’ll get oceans of azure and greenglow,

and you’ll swim there, forever free--

you’ll swim forever free.

   And when they ask you what you want,

   and you struggle to reply,

   it makes no dif’rence what you say,

   we have answered with our lives.


If you want love, you'll get love.
If you want peace, you'll get peace.
If you want children to cherish and dance with,
you'll get all you can hold of these--
all you can hold of these.

Feathers

Sitting on the porch of the cabin with a bad cold (I have the cold, the cabin is fine). Just refining lyrics and practicing the songs (whisperingly), working with *song order both for the CD and for presentation. Firing off emails and facebook messages to both committed and potential supporters of this project. Thinking about hope. In my Celtic descant of a few days ago, I painted hope as fragile. Today I've reviewed what Emily Dickinson had to say about hope:

Hope is the thing with feathers 

That perches in the soul, 

And sings the tune--without the words, 

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; 

And sore must be the storm 

That could abash the little bird 

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land, 

And on the strangest sea; 

Yet, never, in extremity, 

It asked a crumb of me.

Tough little bird. Tougher than my hope, it seems. Maybe it's just the cold getting me down. Mostly I love the third line. 

My Peace Mountain Mediaworks partners (Roger & Melanie Hoffman and Steven Kapp Perry, the Scripture Scouts crew) and I are wrapping up a presentation for second-graders to perform. Melanie wrote a lovely song, below, and I just wrote Roger to ask him if he would send me over an MP3. I want to play it through on guitar (it was written on piano) and see if it fits into Roses and Hope.

There’s so much to do, so much to know.

Please share your light so I can grow.

Then I will find my way to go,

If you’re there.

When I make mistakes, please try to see

Who I really am when you look at me.

There’s so much that I can be,

If you’re there.

I need someone strong. I need you

to believe in me

and stand by my side as I make my dreams come true.

Thank you for all the things you do

That help me know I matter to you.

I can always make it through,

If you’re there.

I need someone strong. I need you

to believe in me

and stand by my side as I make my dreams come true.

            And I’ll stand by your side. I’ll be with you.

            Together we all can make our dreams come true.

©2011 by Melanie Hoffman

*Here's the order as it stands. The titles in green are the entirely new songs.

Mother of Oceans 

The Woman and the Moon     

I Want To Be Near

Tender Mercies 

Dumb As a Hammer

Hope, Like Smoke                (centuries-old accompaniment)

I Want To Go With You

Take the Mountain Down    (new verse)

Something Like a Rose

Into Your Heart

Roses and Hope 

If You’re There

A Once Broken Love 

I have some more hymns worked up for guitar. I think I’ll include them as “hidden tracks” on the CD--tracks that aren’t listed in the packaging, but which show up about ten seconds of silence following the last listed song. I have some hymns worked up for guitar. I think I’ll include them as “hidden tracks” on the CD--tracks that aren’t listed in the packaging, but which show up after about ten seconds of silence following the last listed song. 

That's not always a good idea. Three CDs ago, I played some hymns on guitar for Steve Perry. He liked them a lot and told me I should record them. So I made “Front Porch Hymns and Humns.” But the humns wound up outnumbering the hymns, and I’d added vocals to the hymns I had, so I put in the straight unsung guitar performances as hidden tracks. A couple of years later, I asked Steve if he was enjoying the guitar hymns. He said, “What guitar hymns?” When I first gave him the CD, he’d immediately loaded the tracks he could see into his ipod and put the CD on a shelf. He’d never been aware of the music he’d asked me for! Now he is and, perhaps to atone, he’s playing them on the radio pretty regularly.

All the above could change, and probably will. But not until I’m over my cold. And when I'm over my cold, I'll figure out why these paragraphs look so funny.

Promised Love Song

I wanted to write a love song--I told you that. The theme of this project took me to Robert Burns' "My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose." Bob Dylan said once that Burns' lyric shaped Dylan's life more than any other song. I couldn't write that lyric. I wrote this one. This morning. The music feels kind of Celtic.


My love is only something like a rose.
My love is quite unlike the ones I've ever tried to grow.
They flamed and hung like treasure in my childhood,
then fell apart like autumn on the snow.


My love is only something like a rose,
only just a little like the ones my childhood knew.
They kissed me with their color, sweet and sultry,
then they flew in pieces when the dry wind blew.


     Something like those roses, but much sweeter,
     something so much lovelier than those,
     something like a rose but so much deeper,
     my love is only something like a rose.


She smiles more like a diamond than a rose.
She blooms in ev'ry season of my wild and windy life.
Her pages, soft and warm, unfold forever
from the never-ending center of my wife.

     Something like those roses, but much sweeter,

     something so much lovelier than those,

     something like a rose but so much deeper,

     my love is only something like a rose.

A Little Nuts

In every hour I can find, I've been sneaking off with my D-18 and a book of music manuscript paper and working on songs for "Roses and Hope." I'm a little nuts about this project--there's even a tinge of desperation to it. I feel like I have to get it done before something stops me. A week ago I asked a good and generous friend if he was willing to be a patron of the arts again. (Public interest in this thing needs to reach a "tipping point" soon for the project to go forward.) He asked me to get back to him in a few days. I've had some trouble getting through, and don't have an answer yet.

This is the "nuts" part: I actually put it off some, thinking I first needed to finish writing the songs I'd started, because if he and his wife were unwilling or unable to help, I might lose heart. Still, with no answer, I knew yesterday afternoon that I have to write a wonderful love song, and woke up today knowing the imagery and how the song should feel.

A Little Day Left

The sun is sinking, but there's a little day left. When Steven Kapp Perry and I wrote the musical "Take the Mountain Down" in 2007 (a bluegrass treatment of the parable of the Prodigal Son), the title song was just a chorus. It felt like a full song on stage, because it was sung first, slowly and with just guitar, by the father (me), and then the tempo gradually picked up and the prodigal son (Sam Payne) joined on a repeat of the chorus. And it's a long chorus. But even then I wanted there to be a verse someday. It's time.

I'll type the chorus here, and then this evening's verse.

Let me take the mountain down

that stands between your heart and mine.

Let me shake it to the ground

and let our lives in love entwine.

Oh wrap the sweet forgiveness 'round

about your worn and weary bones.

Let me take the mountain down

and have my lost lamb safe at home.

Verse:

The Spirit grows like a cloud over the plain,

then the rain it falls on down on hard, hard ground.

The Spirit glows like a moon over my pain

and, like the grain, it sways around and around and around.

The Spirit shouts like a beacon on the hill,

like a million colors rising in the sky.

I have to laugh as the Spirit tears apart

all the gray that filled my heart on the day you said goodbye.

(I think I'd better quit now and move the hose and play with my kids. It's been a long day, and I don't know if more than three blog posts a day are allowed.)

Stealing From a Blind Harpist

This is a busy Roses and Hope day.

I play once a week with a Celtic band called Annie's Romance. We've had a couple of gigs and there are a few more popping up on the calendar. Rob Macdonald plays authentic pipes, whistles, and banjo, Annie Rosevear plays blazing flute and occasional whistle, Liz Manwaring plays tasty fiddle, and I thump along on the guitar, trying to keep up. It is so fun.

One of the tunes Rob handed out to us is "O'Carolan's Welcome." Turlough O'Carolan was a blind Irish harpist who composed in the early and mid-seventeen hundreds, and he wrote melodies to break your heart. I used one on my Christmas CD "By the Virgin Born" as a setting for a "Joseph's Lullaby."

I'm robbing from the well again. This afternoon I want to come up with a kind of descant lyric to lay over the top of Annie's Romance playing "O'Carolan's Welcome." So here goes:

Hope, like smoke, scatters wild on the wind,
a scent on the breath of the evening.
Hope, like smoke, will arise, dance, and spin,
die away then and leave me a-grieving.


Welcome me home. Bring me out of the night,
out of stirrings and struggles and striving.
Welcome me home. Let us cherish the light--
warm our hands 'round a hope hushed and thriving.

Writing a Verse

"Dumb As a Hammer" needs at least one more short verse. Thought I might as well work on it here as in Word.

Waiting for a meeting of playwrights, director, and stage manager yesterday afternoon at BYU, I had a minute to think in the sculpture garden just south of the Museum of Art and came up with an "arrow" image.

Make me blind as an arrow from your bow. (string?) on your string.
Make me smooth, swift, and simple--like a sparrow, let me sing. (Do they?)
Make me true, smooth, and simple--like an arrow, let me sing.
Let me fly through the heart of (?) from/with your fingers on the string.
...let me sing
through the sky, blind and eager for the sting. (strong. too strong?) Sings good!
bring / king / three-syllable "ing" like happening (obedience word or rejoicing word)


Make me blind as an arrow on your string.
Make me true, smooth, and simple--like an arrow, let me sing
Through the sky, blind and eager for the sting.

["Sharp" might be easier to take than "blind." But "blind" is closer to "dumb," and that's the desire.]

Will the violence of the verses be mitigated or qualified by the Isaiah's peace imagery in the chorus? I need to sing this for somebody. Blogmate, what do you think?