Caledon Mar.1991
(For Duane)
1
There’s a stretch of road
Just out of town
Someone left a lorry there
Broken down
Forgot to put the handbrake on
Ten miles out of
Caledon
A misty night
For two young travellers
On a big bike
Devil may care,
They had a weekend pass
Starry-eyed, wind-blown hair
They were riding fast
It was a time of youth
A time of joy
A time for the best of everything
For two good buddies
One, just twenty three years old,
He was my boy
But fate and fortune
Had it all figured out
They’d cut some kind of deal no doubt
One of them would get the last laugh
Fortune turned away
With misty eyes, while fate
Wrote out the epitaph
Contract signed, the deal was done
The time and place
Make it Caledon
They came a barrelling down that hi-way
The time, they say, must have been theirs
Laughing and a-joking;
Completely unawares
Too late, or too early, who can say?
To turn the tide
That separated them from this world
And the other one
Only mentioned in prayers;
Nobody told them
It would be their last ride
They saw that truck
In a haze of blue
Too late for what fate
Already knew
They saw that truck
They were doing a ton
They hit that mother
Broadside on
And someone lost his first-born son
Ten miles out of
Caledon
The bearer of bad tidings came
Holding a piece of paper
With your name
He could have been knocking on anyone’s door
But mine had pulled the shortest straw
It was Saturday morning around half-five
I got the news
You were no longer alive
Two strangers standing face to face
Neither wanting to be
In the other one’s place
God knows what such encounters do
How they affect the lives
Of me and you
Tides change the course that rivers run
God rides a pale horse in the sun
And a universe tore out of me
One of us got trapped
And one got free
On that fateful night you came undone
Ten miles out of
Caledon
There was never a Monday
That’s been as blue
As the one when I came
To identify you
Your cold, broken body
Was as cold as a stone
Everything I remembered
About you was gone
With trembling hands I straightened
Your ragged, blond hair
Closed your eyes, which were fixed
In a china-doll stare
Felt salt water
Burning my cheek
And knew, there weren’t
Any kind of words
I could speak
There’s a desolate spot
On that long road home
Where I let loose my tears
And wrote you this poem
They say God writes our names
In the book of life
Yours is carved on a phone pole
With an old pocket knife
I’ve still got that little, yellow “mills tin”
That you used to keep your tobacco in
And a busted wristwatch
The hands frozen in time...
And a prayer that someday
This poem will rhyme...
For it’s taken seventeen years
To write this song
In the hope that the words
Would not come out wrong
It’s been a long road
And we’ve come a long way
And the hardest part, is not knowing
What to say
But the time has come
And I’m doing my best
To lay your memory to rest
I love you in my simple way
And wish there was something
I could have done
To change what happened on that day
Ten miles
Out of Caledon-
Where the grass still yields
To the summer wind
In those vast cornfields
That never end
And I guess when all is said and done
The night will fall
And one by one
The light will be stolen
From another sun
Ten miles
Out of Caledon
Copyright john Scott 2007
Adding your comment:
and how you actually saw him...wow... i wasn't with my mother when she died, but everyone said i wouldn't have wanted to see her...
Pam
This is so sad. To lose a child. I have lost two brothers in the past, one 17 and the other 24 and my mom told me it was the worst pain ever to lose a child. (Losing brothers was no picnic either) It was horrible to lose my brothers and now having children of my own...well I can only imagine the pain of losing one of them and hope I do not have to face that. I'd like to go first! 
