Delta Dreams - Martin Simpson

We drove North from New Olreans

In a '55 Bel Air

Music on the bench seat

Expectation in the air

There’s room for a man to wear his hat

In this church of red and cream

And we are pilgrims of purpose

Driving in this dream

«Is that a '55, man?»

«I used to drive a '55…»

«What you got under the hood, man?

««She makes me feel alive»

Live oaks draped with Spanish moss

Like rags of shawls and ball gowns

Shade the shame-faced dowagers

Along the river road

And on the bluffs at Vicksburg

The big guns still guard the river

Menacing the barges

As they haul their heavy load

Outside the closed down undertakers

Two Lincoln hearses stand there

Rusting and a pealing

In the unforgiving air

The church where Sonny Boy lies buried

Burned down to the ground

The crucifix of rusty nails

And ashes there I found

There’s no panther in the canebreak

No devil at the crossroads

But here’s a '57 Cadillac

And it’s tearing down the road

It’s Birdbreath and his buddies

They’re coming from Chicago

They got a fifth of whiskey

They got a hundred miles to go

They are barrelling from the West Side

To the Gulf of Mexico

Oh the young people they left here

For the steel mills and assembly lines

The marshalling yards and the killing floor

Many years ago

But the cities they are dying

And the industries are wasted

And there sure is no good reason

To come back here any more

We drove North from New Olreans

In a '55 Bel Air

Got music on the bench seat

Expectation in the air

There’s room for a man to wear his hat

In this church of red and cream

And we are pilgrims of purpose

Driving in this dream