Sorrow and Joy

We’ve had some good times
In photographs you see us laughing and carrying on
White shirts on the clothesline
Outside flapping like misshapen flags

And where are the claims that we staked when we sank in the mire
Motion suspended like stillness of birds on a wire
Look, in good order from tallest to smallest
Dressed up for the shot
Some of us got to go on with our lives
The ones that leave holes are the ones that did not

And if you believe you will see them again over Jordan
And if you’re not sure, you will plant them a tree in the garden
Sorrow and joy are not oil and water

They’re hater and lover, they inform each other
Attract and repel make us sick make us well
But in the end we must hold them together

On the day that President Reagan was shot
You skipped home from school thinking this was good news
We surrounded you horrified broke you to tears
But we’d force fed you politics beyond your years

And after you died it was me who had cried
At the memory
Some things would fade
But that image is clear as the day to me
Sorrow and joy…

Now you’re a still life, a rose on the table
Forever a child
My desperate desire just to ask you some questions
Your school picture staring back at me a smile

Plays on your face like the best of the times that we knew
And how the negative lights up the darkness in you
Sorrow and joy are not oil and water