Warm
Harbor
Maybe
you wonder
What I do
After I kiss you goodbye
Every morning
I've never
told you
Have I
Oh I
know you think
You know what I do
I work.
But just between you and me
That
isn't exactly true
You
see I'm not
A working man at all
I'm a Captain
Of a paper boat called
life
And every morning
When I hear the screen door fall
I set sail
On
a sea of lonely hours
Through a storm
Of trouble and strife.
Wash
the dishes
And I crashing through
A school of hungry fishes
Clean the
floor
And I'm charting courses
Where ever Cook hasn't been before
Darn
a sock
And I'm battening down the hatches
To meet the waves
Of some little
boy's rock
And later
With
the smell of dinner
Cooking on the stove
I'm standing spread-legged
On
the Quartermast
Giving every oarsman
A roaring heave-ho
The
storm's behind
The world isn't flat
The car lights bounce
From a white
picket fence shine
And the Captain's over the side
Home again
To his
Warm Harbor place to hide
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Lancelots
and Guiniveres
Every
year they come again
Pug nosed and pigtailed Guiniveres in distress
And
awkward little Lancelots
Out to slay themselves a dragon
Wearing dress-ups
or tennis shoes and blue jeans
And riding little red wagons
Maybe
you remember
The boy you used to be
And the time you said you'd be richer
That
J. Paul What's His Name
Me - I was going to be Trigger
Except with a black
mane
Funny actually
You
know today I can't even whinny
But the kid next door who always wanted
To
play Einstein came pretty close
He's balding in the right spots
And doing
scientific tests
Just outside of Los Alamos
That's
the trouble with being
Fledgling Lancelots and Guiniveres
It's so easy to
grow up
And find all those dragons
You were going to slay
And all those
black prince's dungeons
Where you and I used to play
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Old
Friends
Talking
to someone
You've known for more than a year
Is a lot like talking
To
the face in your bathroom mirror
That's the nice thing
About having old
friends
You don't have to worry about
Conversations with two ends
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A
Pocket Full of Dimes
Years
ago
When I was living alone
I used to think the only way
I'd ever talk
to anybody
Was by long distance
On some public phone
Sometimes
I thought
I'd go out of my mind
Always worrying and
Putting my hands
in my pockets
Checking for a dime
And
you know how that is
Every time you close yourself up
In a phone booth
Someone
fills your pocket up with bills
But
that was long ago.
Since
then I put a wife
And two kids in my home
And found out what it is
That
makes a man feel so alone
It's
not just being by yourself you know
It's the fear of having to stay that way
For
tomorrow and the next
And the next day
So
maybe you understand why
Now phones are the last thing
On my mind
And
why I call my wife and kids
My pocket full of dimes
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Keeping
Secrets
There's
nothing I love more
Than having a secret
And nothing I hate more
Than
having to keep one
I can
keep a secret secret
From anybody anywhere
As long as they don't care
But
a secret isn't really a secret
Is it
When no one knows it's there
So
I hint and hedge
And laugh around the edge
Until it isn't anymore
And
to tell the truth
I don't feel worse
I feel better than I did before
Because
the magic in a secret
Isn't keeping it from those
For whom you care
It's
the job in telling it
For the two of you to share
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The
Boob Tube
Television
It's
a modern miracle
At least that's what the television people say
And I guess
it must be
How else could you get 200,000,000 minds
Joined together
To
watch almost as many electronic dots
Talk about the weather
And
who would have believed
Regis Philbin and Pamela Anderson
The Sopranos and
Mickey Mouse
Would someday push Hemingway
Shakespeare and Mozart
Out
of the house
Why I even
hear
We can thank TV forgiving marriage new hope
People only talk during
the commercials
And who can have an argument
In the time it takes to sell
a bar of soap
But with
all these miracles
There's still one thing I don't get
How come my TV keeps
playing the same old movie
With some purple-eyed, six-legged spaceman
Who
decides to take himself to our leader
And then walks up to a television set
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The
Cost of Growing Up
I
never wonder what happened
To the child I used to be
He simply grew up
And
became the man I call me
But
whatever happened
To all the butterflies he used to chase
And all the grassy
hills
That used to scratch his back
While he watched elephants and tigers
Float
across the sky
In a cotton candy race
What
happened
To all those warm winter days
And all those double feature cowboys
Who
rode across the popcorn dark
From noon to four
On Saturdays
What
happened
To all those Tarzans
Who had to promise his mother
They wouldn't
get grass stains on his jeans
And all those white sheet ghosts and goblins
Who
ate all that candy
On the day after Halloween
Did
they grow up too
Or did they die
All those elephants and goblins and butterflies
I
know I wanted to be a grown man someday
But it still seems a terrible price
For
a little boy to pay
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The
Lemonade Tree
Have
you ever found a miracle
Growing in your back yard
I did yesterday
It
seems my daughter planted it
Just by wishing hard
For a game to play
I
know this sounds ridiculous
To adults like you and me
But for one moment
when she said
"Daddy look! A Lemonade Tree!"
I thought I saw
it.
I thought I could feel
The
coolness of a leafy sweet shade
Hiding the sun
I thought I could taste
The
sour of lemons
And the sugar of fun
Of
course you and I know better
There's no way to grow
A Lemonade Tree
What
I saw and felt and tasted
Was a child's mind aglow
The joy of being three
But
still there was a miracle
In my yard yesterday
No Lemonade Tree
But a
miracle all the same
For a child at play
Touched
the child in me
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