Come of Age Lyrics

The kids in this city they grow just like the trees

Nothing sheltering and nourishing in the deeper ways they need

Bolting upwards to the sun

Fully grown but yet so young

Fledglings in a world of nests

Scattered by such bitter winds

And the distance that grows between

My hands and those born unto these days

It's striking me how generations past

Might have felt similar ways

And the disconnect and the changes that are coming

Some haven't happened yet

Some are so deeply running

What kind of person can I be to those

Who live around my knees

Being handed down the dregs

Of what was handed down to me

Maybe it's not a question of what we want to do or say

But an urging for a blessing

As we carve out these dark and troubled days

There's a letter in the mail from my little cousins who

Despite the crushing weight of it all on their shoulders

See creativity bloom

And I'm captured by the moment

And I imagine bringing them here

To share something of my world with them

They can carry through their years

But then the moments gone

And I wonder what do I have to give

When I'm a relic from a time

But it wasn't always like this

Can I meet them where they are

What kind of person can I be to those

Who bear the markings of the great transition

Where live supposedly starts to set off

When they find out they've been had

In some grave and blinding telling

In their eyes we did the damage

It is us who did the felling

Those who came before me

They owe it to me

But so far I'm mostly empty handed

We're stacked and we're shipped

And we're sold as ill equipped

We're grieving and we're stranded

I thought I knew where I could find them

But it turns out I was wrong

I have to will them into being

I have to call that ancient song

And as an older one to little ones

Who might by chance sing it to

If I don't know how to sing it back to them

This is their bereavement too

Time simultaneously feels tight around my chest

While cutting loose it's fraying ties

What do we have left

When we're all as bereft as the next in the line

We're all as bereft

Maybe this is our time