Brigham's Door

Lyrics

Oh, you heavy plank of oak.
You were never just a door.
I trace the grain with my finger.
Samuel Brigham, he raised you.
Seventeen twenty.
The air smelled sharp, of sawdust and cold promise.
He set your heavy iron hinges
to face the mud and dust of the Great Post Road.
You became a threshold.
Between the lonely wilderness
and a clean-swept floor.
Between the long day's journey
and a tankard by the fire.
How many hands on your iron latch?
How many shoulders leaned you open?
Farmer, merchant, soldier, friend.
A story starts, a journey ends.
You swing in, you swing out again.
A silent witness, Brigham's door.
To everyone who came before.
Mary Brigham must have known your every groan and creak.
The stagecoach from Worcester, another weary week.
The smell of damp wool and horses in the hall.
Men stamped their boots hard against the coming squall,
coming to argue, to listen, to be bold.
Governing a town from the common room's cold,
before the meeting house had its own four walls.
You let them all inside. You heard their calls.
How many hands on your iron latch?
How many shoulders leaned you open?
Farmer, merchant, soldier, friend.
A story starts, a journey ends.
You swing in, you swing out again.
A silent witness, Brigham's door.
To everyone who came before.
Then you brought us the whole world.
A small, neat slot cut for the mail.
The town's first post office, beyond the pale
of rumor on the wind. A folded sheet,
a letter from Boston, bitter or sweet.
Jonathan took the keys from his father's hand,
but you were the constant thing in this new land.
You held the line. You held the afternoon sun.
Just a door.
That's what some might say.
Just some old wood.
Worn smooth and grey.
But I can feel the ghosts.
Lingering.
In the grain's deep stain.
Brigham's door.