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Blackberry Time

by Jud Caswell

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1.
For Sale 04:11
He tore the gravel up as he parked his Cadillac Said it was my lucky day, clapped me on the back, Told me that his company had authorized a proposition He figured that the cash would mean so much to a man in my position I ain't much to look at, I don't have much to show Just this junk shop where I'm selling bikes beside the road Still I never had no use for these out-of-staters Who come to buy our neighborhood and then decide we're not their kind of neighbors They may say it's a price we have to pay You gotta watch your home divvied up and sold away ­ But I can't stand to see that money waved around As if everyone and everything's for sale in my home town I heard he called his lawyers, I heard he called the town I heard he figured if my bikes were gone I wouldn't hang around So he bought 'em all from me, threw them on a truck Paid his money on the nail and drove off laughing, wishing me good luck The Wall Street Journal and the Prep School Education Teach you nothing about the landfill and the transfer station And where the good stuff goes when it gets thrown away And where I went to pick up fifty old familiar bicycles today
2.
Lately I've been chasing after little things that always slip away Living in my calendar and living in my car instead of living in the day But a wind blew down from Canada this morning Like a warning shot of cold across my bow So now I'm out here in my sandals getting bloodied by these brambles And eating all the berries I'm allowed Because it's Blackberry Time, Blackberry Time It's a secret of a season in its prime When all the world is full and ripe and quickly going by Then it's Blackberry Time The air is full of cricket song and hayseed, honeybee and dragonfly The last full day of summer, baked and cooling on the windowsill Smells a lot like apple pie And up beneath the poplar and the birches At the border where the grass has gone to trees I've got those stains upon my fingers and an aftertaste that lingers One part sweet, one part fruit and two parts seed Blackberry Time I wish I had a cup to fill to take this harvest home and make it stay I wish I had that recipe to press it into wine to seal the flavor of the day Watching from a silver maple's branches there's a catbird, sings a hungry kind of song He says œbe thankful for the sweet because you know that it don't keep You just eat what you can eat and move along When it's Blackberry Time
3.
One by one the treaties were broken Each time the lesson was the same That every breath spent on negotiation Would only serve to fan the flame Side by side they had been neighbors For centuries without dispute And now there's a time bomb ticking in each conversation Welcome to Beirut. Peace and Quiet smoldering tonight Peace and Quiet Marking time between the fights You can pray for gentle weather And the strength to live together And cry yourself to sleep In the Peace and Quiet, dark and deep. In this graveyard of asphalt and ashes Looking for a way to live With no common ground and no hope that anyone Can forget it or forgive So in quiet desperation A kind of promise has been vowed To stay on your own side, always walk with hooded eyes And never speak your differences out loud. You read aloud from the paper this morning Over scrambled eggs and tea All I could think as you held forth on Lebanon Is how much it sounds like you and me The crooked borderlines and minefields That make two countries of our home The freezing detente of our cynical civility Keeping us together and alone.
4.
Working in the crawlspace eating dirt, dragging forty feet of hose Spraying poison in the ground, Dust and cobwebs all around Filling up my nose Gary hollers in to me the boss is on the phone I pretend that I can't hear so they leave me alone Eight hours a day they own my hands My legs, my back at their command They rule my body and my time But down in the crawlspace Down in the crawlspace it's all mine All alone in darkness, taking back a little time they took Just an hour, maybe two Where no one tells me what to do And I can think about my book But there's so much I've forgotten I've got to figure out again Like how to get an agent and how my novel's going to end Missouri sounds like œmisery for a reason, one supposes Waiting on the days of corn and overtime and roses Gary calls me out to give a hand with all the piles in the garage Broken toys and broken chairs, Bags and boxes everywhere There's hardly room to budge Gary shakes his head, œWhy not just throw it all away? Why hang on to all of this? How can people live this way?
5.
Immune 03:58
You push back your hair Stir your coffee, taste the spoon You say you're trying to be fair And it's not that you don't care But you're immune Your extroverted eyes Could lead someone to assume But something in me dies When you say you sympathize But you're immune For seven weeks you wrote the history of you and me Untangling tapestries of thorn and rose All alone you made us simple once again Reducing us to friends You drew the curtain closed You blow a kiss goodnight I breathe the last of your perfume I won't say that you're not right Because I can't begin to fight When you're composed as a symphony Armored in apathy So far away from me in your cocoon You're immune
6.
The raven in the apple tree is watching His voice is like the rattle of a rusty iron gate Swinging on its hinges in the wind Beckoning and welcoming us in You and I have come from far away Drawn by quiet murmurings too steady to ignore A siren song singing in our bones Calls us to this place we've never known You find a thing you somehow know you've always missed And then you feel so lost Ask the raven how it comes to this The raven says because, because, because The raven says because, because, because The wind across the millpond so familiar As surely as the tolling of the Baptist chapel bell Ringing off of cedar tree and stone Echoes of our history and home (chorus) Our little girl runs down the lanes She skips among the rows and rows and rows of family names Apples on the ground beneath the raven Windfalls of a passing storm returning to the earth Gathered on the roots where they were made In the shadow of their cradle they make their grave
7.
Everyone wishes we had his new phone number John did the math it's been more than a year Since Rob graced our presence And made an appearance At this living-room soiree It feels like he just disappeared Nobody noticed the signs he was leaving No one remembers who stopped calling who Now it seems clear After Rob cut his hair He was just marking time Till he worked up the courage to do what he had to Maybe it's best, maybe we all could use some change A moment to rest, the freedom to breathe and rearrange Maybe he met someone, got a new girlfriend A new place to live, a new job Nobody here has any idea What ever happened to Rob Somebody read it or saw it on Oprah That every five years we start over again It seems like a shame But there's no one to blame So let's lift up a glass To the further adventures of faraway friends Karl whittled down almost two-hundred pounds and he turned his attention to Jesus Ken's back in school with Foucault and Camus and he's writing his doctoral thesis Kathy and Stew got a family brewing and Dave took that high-powered job But nobody here has any idea What ever happened to Rob We don't want to guilt him, just want to get filled in About what ever happened to Rob
8.
Too Late 03:38
My fault, my bad I wish I hadn't done it but I have That's my bad, that's my fault Here's your opportunity to rub a little salt I wish it was a thing I could reverse But since it's not there's nothing to be done but make it worse Too late, too late, too late to make it right Too late to make it better with a kiss and say goodnight No one can deny you've earned the right to blow off steam So turn that kettle up and let it scream Your turn, your go Tell me all the things I should have known It's your go, it's your turn Let's make believe there's wisdom in this lesson I can learn But we both know this one's all over but the shouting And if you'd rather skip that part, I sure could do without I used to think I knew the space between us Come to find out I was wrong I feel the ground give out beneath my feet by the time I know I'm slipping I'm already halfway gone OK, Fine We've proven we can hold this bitter line That's just fine, that's OK Before you turn the light out there's one thing I've got to say It's so hard for me to lower my defense Can I say I'm sorry now or have I missed my chance?
9.
Leave Him 03:41
In the front seat of her Subaru In the middle of the night Talking through our histories All our mysteries casting Rorschach shadows In the sodium light On a good day she would tell me We should think about goodbye But the bad days were the best days When she held me close Counting on my fingers all the reasons she would try To leave him, leave him Leave him, leave Him for me The press of skin between us Never measured half as much As the great unwinding intertwining coastline Where two lives really touch Her solitary marriage It is the saddest think I know He was the strong and silent not quite violent type Who never gave a good enough excuse for her to go I never woke beside her My heart beneath her head I never spoke to chide her And I never said to leave
10.
Do you see what I see? Up there on the right Smiling like a cat and sliding out of sight They've got Reagan's Teflon And Richard Nixon's soul They're slippery as oil Mean as gasoline Black as Christmas coal Go hopping down the money trail You find it always leads To the Men Behind the Bushes¦ Can't you smell the greed? They've solved the problem Of seeming too unkind Use Jesus as a body shield As you rob the country blind Keep it simple, let's focus on the war While the riptide of arrogance and influence Drags the living wage offshore You can close your eyes and tell yourself They're looking out for you But the Men Behind the Bushes¦ Know that that's not true Look me in the eye, tell me it's all right And what we see is what we get Can't you see the cretin king? Can't you see the master's strings? Can you see the puppeteer yet? It's a whirlpool, anyone could drown When the paranoia sucks you in And pulls you down You feel the outrage fading into numb When you realize it only makes more sense The more cynical you become You can close your eyes and tell yourself There's really no one there But the Men Behind the Bushes¦ Have got me scared
11.
Let It Go 04:47
It's stuck in your head It's under your skin And the more you rail and the more you shout To work it though and work it out The more you work it in I know, I know It hurts you so Just let it go It's more than you can carry When it's all that you can do Just to bite your nails down to the fists And rattle off your favorite lists Of all the nastiness that's been done to you (chorus) You could spend your whole life telling the story Of how the world's been so unfair But how's that going to change your situation And who's gonna care? Holding on to anger I sure do understand But it's caught you there in a monkey trap And you'll never get your freedom back Until you open up your hand

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released April 1, 2007

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Jud Caswell Brunswick, Maine

Seasoned Maine artist/performer & multi-instrumentalist Jud Caswell gives listeners a front-row seat to his engaging manner and storytelling at live shows, backed by his musical prowess/writing and his down-home warmth and wit, as recorded in his solo performance, “Live at the Seagull Shop,” the No 1 CD on the FAI Folk Chart March 2020. ... more

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