The Love Song of _. ______ ________

“Why is every song a love song? It’s the only place where love is still alive and well. And why do we always sing along? Because these are our hymns”.

Hymns, we sing. By definition, obviously. We all sing. By nature, inevitably. Inevitably, we hymn. Sing –

to the untouchable, to the better, the highest. Sing – to the beautiful, the handsome, the hottest. Sing – to the only one we could ever want until one day they’re no longer wanted. Sing – because we have no choice. Sing – because emotion chokes us. Sing – when we can’t breathe, we can’t talk, we can’t see, we can
sing –

Because we can’t help it. Life is racing by us faster

And faster; at once it’s a rope that tugs you along, then

No sooner than you can get a good grip it’s a tumbling stream

Of water running through your hands. It gives me no end

Of aggravation, and you hear me scream and cuss because

Sometimes I just can’t hold on and that’s why I need YOUR hands.

That boy over there? He’s beginning to look like a man now

But on the inside he’s shaking, every day inching, closer

To graduation and he’s scared, scared stiff

To stare life in the face. Sometimes he swears there is no way

He will get on in life and that’s why he needs HER hands. That girl?

There’s no place she goes without her friend by her side, who

Has a kind word on her lips and an open heart always, who

Yesterday found a lump, and tomorrow will know how long and

Sometimes she swears nothing in life is fair, but if it had to be someone..

She knows she’ll have a hand to hold. There are women and men,

Who walk in and out of each other’s lives like specters in the broad daylight

And maybe they will never know what it has been like

To really live their lives? But that won’t be me in twenty years, I won’t

Be the one to lay back and be swept along, the current to comfortable chairs,

Luby’s lunches and early bedtimes, that won’t be me. I’ll be the one, you’ll see me,

Latching hands as I go, building a force to be reckoned with, leaving no one behind,

A wall of bobbing persons in the river, each one of them my friends, my loves,

I will latch hands with the lonely and the broken, the happy and the exultant,

The forgotten, the bothered, the busy, the mindful, my sisters,

My family, my darlings each, each and every one

Damming up Time until it must stand still, it simply must because

Until it does, we will.