Rosy Rear-View Mirror

 

Down along Ste-Catherine Street

My love and I did stray

We could not sleep for trying

There was fire burning in our clay

We say the rosy-fingered dawn

That the poets sang of old

We knew there were some things in life

Could not be bought or sold

 

There are seagulls here just like the ones

That flew when I was young

But these are city shite-hawks

With one eye on my lunch

I can see them wheel around the boats

Just like I was there

Birds & sea & sun & sky

Like in some Highland prayer

 

Memory is a dark narcotic

Better now than then

Cooler, smoother, better looking

Than it was back then

 

There never was a golden age

When milk & honey flowed

When people lived like gods on earth

And paid up what they owed

"Those were the days," you hear them say

With a nostalgic shiver

Yeah, we all walk tall & proud & free

In a rosy rear-view mirror

 

Memory is…

 

Patrick Hutchinson © 2004 SOCAN