Working on a dream

Snare-drum slams, the whole crowd sways;

like a vision he takes the encore as the saxophone plays.

This is Bruce Springsteen singing for the lonely,

like me and I’m not the only.

“Don’t turn us home again

we just can’t face ourselves alone again!

Don’t run back off stage, Bruce, you know what we’re here for

[a dream, though we’re thinking, maybe we’re not that young anymore].

Show a little faith, blind us with light, we’re not beauties but hey, we’re alright;

or, tonight, have we been waiting in vain for a saviour to rise from that stage?”

[sing]

Oh, oh come take my hand, we’ll ride out together and case the promised land. 

Oh, oh down Thunder Road.

Sitting on the night-bus home, I’m chuckling quietly

at the concert’s joyful camaraderie,

the sing-a-long songs of love and redemption, but I’m thinking,

“What have me and Bruce Springsteen got in common?”.

His father left him, lonesome in New Jersey,

mine once lost me in a public library.

Mine, the City broker; his, the factory hand.

Well, they both dreamed of reaching that promised land.

The bus stops at the porch of my Daddy’s house,

where all his pretty dreams were torn;

where he’d stare off alone into the night

with the eyes of one who aches for just being born.

I reach out, take his hand, get him onto the bus,

but before the driver can release the doors shut,

Bruce Springsteen pulls up in a 69 Chevy, Hurst on the floor,

he winds down the window, leans out and calls:

[Sing]

Don’t sit around getting older, watching a little world falling apart; there’s something happening somewhere, even if we’re just dancing in the dark.

And then what do you know? It turns out my Mum’s driving the bus.

She flicks the intercom, strums on a Gibson and chants back, “Bruce,

you were born to say that to every man who beats himself up

then spends the rest of his life trying to cover it up.

And Mum’s human touch is just enough: Dad breaks a smile I recall I once saw

in a photograph taken when he was young, he’s holding a cricket bat, facing every ball

and sure he was born to run!

And as for me?

Well, the highway’s still alive tonight

and where it’s heading, nobody knows,

but I’m reconciled to the morning’s light

and two ghosts bickering down Thunder Road.

2022