i love the sound of the train moving through the dark, rumbling and announcing itself. i love the sound of the baby speaking herself into our conversations today. i love standing under the stars and singing up, halfway between the haunted schoolhouse and the haunted cotton fields, knowing my ghosts and ancestors shared this view, and maybe they sang themselves through tribulation too.

wrote a song under the stars tonight and got to sing it while my beloved adaku utah danced the life into it. here’s the words, i’ll record if i can soon.

if I knew the way
I’d lead you to our water
if I knew the way
I’d take you to our dirt
if I knew the way
I’d lead you home right now
I don’t know I don’t know
I don’t know I don’t know
I don’t know I don’t know
won’t you help me figure it out

if we knew the way
we’d be among those stars now
if we knew the way
we’d be whole
if we knew the way
we’d bring home all our babies
we don’t know we don’t know
we don’t know we don’t know
we don’t know we don’t know
won’t you help us figure it out

won’t you help us feel it out
won’t you help us grow it out
won’t you help us sing it out
won’t you help us figure it out

won’t you help us feel it out
won’t you help us grow it out
won’t you help us dance it out
won’t you help us figure it out