Once upon a time
Lived a boy drenched in reason and rhyme
He culled the fields
A plow he yields
With a smile as soft as soil

But he heard the call to better things
away to rocks and stones that sing
Buried down in dirt and dust
Yields a bite of metal's rust
A smile as sharp as flint

The hand of death touched his soil
But through that barrage he twisted and toiled
But as he pleaded an escape from the grip of black
He knew that it would pull him back
And a set as solid as stone

Back to farm and yield he traveled
To see he life had unraveled
His green fields of corn and roan
Was all dark, and filled with stone
The green boy shadow stained

The boy had twisted and shouted
That the shadow of death should let him out
But in his haste to escape
He forgot the trace of blood and the deeper scrape
That was gunpowder and blood

He forgot to ask
He forgot the tasks
That had given him a soil smile
And in that lost guile
He forgot to ask the hand that gripped him
To wash itself of the shadow
Of blood and gunpowder