John Prine Photograph by Ron Baker (public domain)
We had an apartment in the city Me and Loretta liked living there Well, it’d been years since the kids had grown A life of their own, left us alone
John and Linda live in Omaha And Joe is somewhere on the road We lost Davy in the Korean war And I still don’t know what for, don’t matter anymore
You know that old trees just grow stronger And old rivers grow wilder every day Old people just grow lonesome Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello”
Me and Loretta, we don’t talk much more She sits and stares through the back door screen And all the news just repeats itself Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy We worked together at the factory What could I say if he asks “What’s new?” “Nothing, what’s with you? Nothing much to do”
You know that old trees just grow stronger And old rivers grow wilder every day Old people just grow lonesome Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello”
So if you’re walking down the street sometime And spot some hollow ancient eyes Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare As if you didn’t care, say, “Hello in there, hello”
A human being is here and then disappears in a wind that vanishes inwards and meets the rock’s movements and becomes meaning in always new unity of what is and what is not in a silence where wind becomes wind where meaning becomes meaning in lost movement of everything that has been and at once is from an origin where the sound carried the meaning before the word divided itself and since then never left us But it is in all past and it is in all future and it is in something that doesn’t exist in its vanishing border between what has been and what shall come It is infinite and without distance in the same movement It clears up and disappears and remains while it disappears
Nuthatch–The Upside Down Bird (05/14/22) — Kingwood,TX — Image by kenne
The Nuthatch is a common bird of deciduous forests and wooded urban areas. Known as the “upside down” bird, it is often observed creeping headfirst down tree trunks while searching cracks and crevices for insect food.
A nuthatch’s foot has one big toe (the hallux) that faces backward, while its other three toes face forward.
