Letter & Lyric To Clancy
1977

About noon, after a clear mountain morning in May
I thought about you again.
But then, it's not hard to do.
It happens all the time.
Like works of art hung in the gallery,
Are my memories of our too brief times together.
Would you like to step inside my mind
And let me show you my etchings?

I never treatly you fairly, really.
The only piece of me that I offered,
Offered no promise of tomorrow,
Or even tonight.
The rest of me was committed.
Not so much to the woman as to the children.
They needed a Daddy as much as I needed to be one.
But now all the loose ends of my life are up for grabs.

I'm not asking you to commit
Or to change your life for something you've never known.
But up here in God's Country we welcome summer guests.
Please accept my invitation to
Walk and talk and touchMilk the goat and gather eggsBe pampered like I always promised,But never took, never gave, the time to do.Hear my poems and songs and barnyard soundsAnd see what it's like to beHigh in the mountains with me.