Won’t the Saints come Marching In?
Oh, won’t the Saints come Marching In?

Thank you for watching over us
but
we are in danger, some of us
can’t breathe (400 years or more), could not
sit at the counter almost yesterday —

We’ve been calling down The Better Angels:
please help with these righteous fires.
An Eternal Flame for progress
can not be manned,
it must
be divined.

Won’t the Saints come Marching In?
Oh, won’t the Saints come Marching In?
Oh, Lord, I want
to be
in that number …

Thank you for watching, for making clear
the present dangers, all of us
asking for breath (at least enough to play
the songs that got us through yesterday).

I learned about The Better Angels when
I called you, Mom and Dad, this spring:
“The robin tree branches
are growing into your bedroom window…”
my mother said.
(She used to teach piano, she used
to teach us this song:).

Won’t the Saints come Marching In?
Oh, won’t the Saints come Marching In?
Oh, Lord I want to be in that number …when

The branches have not been pruned:
no request for help (somehow?),
and no one seems able
to cut them down except
who my father calls The Better Angels.