Hard Rain

The title for this blog comes from a Bob Dylan song, one that captures something prophetically poetic, one that speaks a few words for me. I like to imagine it’s God and me sitting on the porch in the cooling afternoon, spanish moss a-sway in the live oaks that stand around us like elders of the faith, and we’ve been talking about the poor old world. And I like to imagine it’s Him asks me these questions. And I pause a moment for dramatic effect, and then strike up the final verse. And He’d grin and sing along with his deep, rich bass, sounding like far-off thunder.

“Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.”

~ by blueeyedson on February 15, 2008.