Just Like Sunlight

And way too early for her night before, Came banging trucks outside her door, She wrapped up in a robe to meet the cold forestry men with the powered saws, Twenty minutes later the maple tree was gone, Fifty years of progress shorn down to a stump that's still bleeding sap, So should never have been treated anything like that. Gone is any echo of the morning's strife, But the mockingbirds still looking for their former life, Come sundown she'll go out into this February night, Looking for the freedom of the song that she'll be singing just like sunlight. She'd finally got a decent job that day, Then her boss came by and took it away, And gave it to the office superstar, She'd understand it's best this way, She's a real team player, with an eye fixed on the clock, Only her friend's playful knock, On her cubicle, to go and get a bite, Reminds her she thinks, deep down people are alright. Two kids got off a school bus, she was stuck behind, One called to the other, and he paid no mind. She's tired, but she'll go out on this early, darkened night, Looking for the freedom of the song that she'll be singing just like sunlight. When she was little, from the doorway, She watched her mother in the mornings, Work the colors with her expert hands, And she never saw the dread behind the smile to spend the day to work the phones She only wondered if she'd ever be grown up to take the world on, like her mother, on her own. Now through the window and the winter haze, She tries to find just one of the sun's last rays, Its clouded dimming makes it really feel a hundred million miles away. And though she'll never this life find the freedom that she seeks, Sometimes she thinks she gets somewhat at peaks, But still feels there's much to be done to try, and just remain in the shadow of the sun. And the tulips on the table in the failing light, Bend and turn and wend, each in a silent fight, She gets her coat and gloves and heads out on this winter's night, Looking for the freedom of the song that she'll be singing just like sunlight. Give her her freedom where she finds it, And she'll be shining when she finds it, Just like sunlight.