The Dreamer

Listen while you read:  https://youtu.be/4S04seo8Uwo

The moon she rides the tattered storm
On a ragged gypsy journey
The snow lies on the mountain
Like a cloak upon a king

My dreams go tumbling with the dust
Out across the valley
Blow above the river
Blow above the sea

And life's a sparrow lost at sea
In the dark of night with far to go
Dreams are ships that sailed away
We are only cargo, only cargo

. . . 

So gypsies dream of being king
Kings of being free
A sailor longs to till the land
The farmer sets to sea

. . . 

Sweet life's a sparrow lost at sea
In dark of night with far to go
Dreams are ships that sailed away
The dreamer's only cargo, only cargo, only cargo

~  Tom Rush

Well, I hope yesterday's song had you tapping your feet, because today, I'm really going to bring you down. Sorry. The death toll in Syria from a chemical attack (now at 75) has me feeling reflective, contemplative, sad, and yes, pissed off. Too much emotion to deal with, and one can only imagine what it feels like to be a Syrian.

"The Dreamer," which appears on New Year, released in 1982, is Tom Rush at his best. I've been a long-time fan, ever since buying Tom Rush when it was released in 1970. I'd never heard of him or heard his music, but I thought he was handsome on the album cover, so I bought it. Smart move. Pretty sure I bought every release after that, and I've lost count of the times I've seen him in concert.

So the tragedy in Syria has me thinking about the happenstance of our births. I recall that, as a child, my nightly prayers included a thank you for being born in America. Of course, as a child of the 50s, I was subject to a heavy dose of nationalism (along with an even heavier dose of Catholicism), and I considered how fortunate I was to have been born an American and a Catholic, as if there were no other country or religion to equal that stroke of luck. My world was very small. And today, I find myself thinking what it would be like to have been born in Syria? What would it have been like to have been born to a coal-mining family in Appalachia? How about being born Barron Trump? Or being born in the wrong body? So gypsies dream of being king / Kings of being free / A sailor longs to till the land / A farmer sets to sea. What are the odds that we are born into the country / religion / sex / demographic that matches who we really are?

So today, we can be grateful that we were not born Syrian. But we can not be smug about it. The current political climate that makes Syrian refugees unwelcome here is a disgrace. We are only cargo. I dream of a compassionate leadership that will set sail to a better world, one whose manifest includes  all of us, kings and gypsies, sailors and farmers, dreamers and realists. I am rooting for the sparrow to find its way.