Cold Spring

We drove a hundred miles that day
To see a Halloween parade 
Skeletal autumn in Cold Spring 

Parents holding hands with Pale Death's infants 
Shivering on the courthouse steps in polyester robes 
And exposed bone thermals 

March them down to riverside square 
Your teeth gnash together as you chew an Excedrin 

On the way home 
The empty parkway wound its way back through charred black pine 
Just like a wormhole 
Hickory death rattles into stagnant tracts of sky
Like warnings whispered 
Antiphonal stridency that slept for half a century 
And where are you 
As lives are punctuated by moons 

I've never loved you more than when you said 
"I'm so scared of all the things I risk with kids I never knew existed"
Time machine rotors ripping holes over Freehold 
Constellations rearrange and orbit 'round the steeple of First Presbyterian Church 

I am Bear Mountain 
I am entering orbit oh

I am Bear Mountain
I am entering orbit

On the way home
The empty parkway wound its way back through charred black pine 
Just like a wormhole
A bridge becomes an island when the ends are disconnected
Wind is feedback 
Antiphonal stridency that slept for half a century
And where are you