There’s an old cellar in the back
Full of peaches that we canned
There’s a little meadow out front with a pond
My house sits by a brook
It runs through our town
They used to pan for gold
In the Carolina rush
I went to find some for myself
These dreams had filled my head
But those that came before had wiped it clean and left it dry
I looked beneath my feet, at the land I thought was mine,
they stripped it of its gold and left my home without its shine
For the first time in my life
I was questioning what was mine
The years that came before seem to echo for all time
Who owns the land?
Just beneath of my front steps, arrow heads with a flint lock,
Daddy put it on the wall, never made sense of it all
So I asked him what it meant
This history that he kept
Feathered through our house,
And ingrained in the wind
He said this was Cherokee back then
They would roam across land,
go hunting with a bow and drink down by our brook
He told the story of our town
How white man did their will,
Their footsteps washed away but that old hickory’s stained with blood
And this guilt ran through my mind,
Like my home was never mine
This lingering question haunts me like their ghosts
Is it thee who owns the gun owns the
Time has a way of making sharper edges smooth, I laid my daddy down to rest, in the ground from which we grew,
how can I not belong? Where I’ve shed my tears and blood, I’ve not been here for long but it’s all I’ve ever known..
20 years and then 3 kids,
Hazel eyes and curly heads
They’re trying to dodge the rain they can’t evade
They brought a different face around,
From the other end of town
They pick flowers from the meadow, swim in the pond
But one day things were grim
My daughters lost a friend
His family bound in chains and drug away
They asked me where he’d gone
Heart was breaking in their eyes
Took a deep breath and told some hard truths
I told the story of this land,
And how the white man does his will
That the things we break will sometimes never heal,
And it’s thee who owns the guns owns the land
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