If I've got to choose alone
One of all the freights I've known –
All my cargoes live or dead,
Bacon pigs or pigs of lead;
Cattle, copra, rice or rails,
Pilgrims, coolies, nitrate, nails,
Lima beans or China teas –
What do you think my pick would be?
Loading lumber long ago
In a ship I used to know,
With the bow-ports open wide
In her stained and rusted side,
And the saws blades screaming shrill
At the Steveston lumber-mill;
Where the Fraser floods and flows –
Green and cold from melting snows.
And the tow-boats' wailing din,
As the booms come crawling in,
Fills the echoing creeks with sound,
And there's sawdust all around;
Deep and soft like drifting snow;
Nowhere much a man can go,
Nothing much to see or do –
Mouldiest burg you ever knew.
But I'd give the years between –
All I've done and all I've seen,
All the fooling and the fun,
All the chances lost or won;
Near and far, by shore and sea,
I would give them all to be,
Loading lumber long ago –
With the lads I used to know!
Loading lumber at the mill
Till the screaming saws were still,
And the rose-red sunset died
From the mountains to the tide;
And the night brought out its stars,
And the wind song in the spars,
Of that ship I used to know –
Loading lumber, long ago!
Reprise:
Cattle, copra, rice or rails,
Pilgrims, coolies, nitrate, nails,
Lima beans or China teas –
What do you think my pick would be?
(Based on a poem by Cicely Fox Smith
from Rovings: Sea Songs and Ballads,
edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Elkin Mathews,
London, UK, © 1921, p.p. 33-34.
Adapted for singing by Charles Ipcar, © 2005.
Tune after traditional The Boys Won't Leave the Girls Alone.)
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Charlie Ipcar
Richmond, Maine |