Summer Painter - Bill Callahan

I painted names on boats for a Summer

For luck you keep the same first letter

You don’t want

You don’t want

You don’t want

Bad luck at sea

Rich Man’s Folly and Poor Man’s Dream

I painted these

While beavers built dams

All around me

Come September, come Fall

Holding a job was not believable behavior at all

So I split

But like a beaver is a dam builder, you never really quit

I made some dough

Socked it away

I always said for a rainy day

I never truly knew who I was working for anyway

The rich or the poor

Who am I working for?

The rich or the poor?

When the hurricane hit

Some found it suspicious

That I’d just since left the frame

Like all that time spent down by the water

Had somehow given me control over the rain

Some people say wrongly that I wash things away

Guess I got my rainy day

Like a sorcerer’s cape

The rain ripped the lips off the mouth of the bay

Rendered the eye

Sleighted the hand

Tricked the land and

Blew the air away

Then came a quiet no one should know

Rich Man’s Folly and Poor Man’s Dream

I’m painting these

While beavers build dams

All around me