What I Took From Framingham

Lyrics

Before I had a name, there was just the space between.
A question marked in pine and mud along the Sudbury stream.

My mother, Marlborough, and her neighbor, Framingham.
They stood on their own boundaries in Seventeen-Oh-One.
Looked at the woods connecting them, the Nipmuc hunting land.
And the General Court in Boston, it put forth a plan.

And you ask what I took from Framingham.
You imagine a fight, a line drawn by a hard hand.
No, it was half of a bargain, made before I was born.
"To be equally divided," the old parchment had sworn.

They were granted "liberty to purchase."
A deed for the trees, the stone, the quiet earth.
They measured it all out with a surveyor's chain.
A new geometry, a kind of paper birth.
Blazed the bark of the oaks, a clean and certain wound.
Laid a promise on the ground.

And you ask what I took from Framingham.
You imagine a fight, a line drawn by a hard hand.
No, it was half of a bargain, made before I was born.
"To be equally divided," the old parchment had sworn.

Twenty-six years passed. July Sixth, Seventeen Twenty-Seven.
I finally drew breath.
My mother Marlborough just gave me her share of the claim.
That's how I got my body. That's how I got my name.
It wasn't theft.
It was my inheritance.

What I took from Framingham...
Was a neighbor.
A boundary we both respect.
A river we both watch run.
The Sudbury doesn't care who signed the deed.