Sunday Strolls: A Park Day Ritual

Lyrics

Old oak...
Do you feel the weight of another Sunday?
The press of another checkered blanket on your roots?

I see them, you know.
In the flicker of the leaves.
A couple on that wrought-iron bench, the green paint flaking then, too.
Nineteen-twenty-something.
Her hat pinned just so.
His hand resting on his knee.
They're not speaking. Just watching the light shift on Lake Abana.
Just breathing in the magnolia, same as me.

And then the film jumps forward.
It's the seventies. Faded denim and a yellow cooler.
The blanket is red and white this time.
Sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.
The sound of a transistor radio, tinny and distant.
And the same shriek of joy from the swingset,
a little girl kicking her sneakers off,
trying to touch your lowest branch.

It’s the same sun, isn't it?
The same Sunday hum.
The same bare feet on the cool, worn ground.
Generations of laughter, held here in the shade you've made.
A quiet ritual, lost and always found.

And look now.
There's a boy with a bright blue ball.
A family with takeout boxes instead of a picnic basket.
He's pointing at a squirrel, his mother is on her phone.
But she's smiling.
And over there, the swings.
A new chain, but the same arc through the sky.
The same gasp of air at the very top.
The same feeling of being about to fly.

The city grows around you.
Glass and steel push at the sky.
But here... time just circles.
Like the water bugs on the lake.
Each Sunday is a ghost of the one before,
and a promise of the one to come.
You hold them all.

It’s the same sun, isn't it?
The same Sunday hum.
The same bare feet on the cool, worn ground.
Generations of laughter, held here in the shade you've made.
A quiet ritual, lost and always found.

Yeah.
You remember.