ashes and angels

Strike the match and watch it burn;
this sulfurous plume, my nostrils turn.
The flame, the heat, the light
Where once a bridge, now just a funeral pyre.

Lights the way back home.
Bars the way back home.
These ashes won't hold me from the cold dark waters below.

If I knew another way back to the place where I've come from I'd go.
But this path still smolders and the current's torrid in this brave new world.
My strength escapes, evaporates; and my broken soul, it bleeds
And my aching ears, they hear angel choirs; distant songs of wholeness sing.

Lights the way back home.
Bars the way back home.
These ashes won't hold me from the cold dark waters below.

Remembering my father's house and those distant fields of innocence
There were lilac summers; the sickly sweetness of the nighttime air.
In spring, we'd walk - In winter, we'd warm by his hearth; a glowing fire within.
Now I curse a match, carelessly tossed, that keeps me from going back again.

Lights the way back home.
Bars the way back home.
These ashes won't hold me from the cold dark waters below.