South December Road

That old brown house is haunted
said the young boys in the road
who threw stones through faceless windows
as the sky filled up with snow

I watched them from a taxi
And the driver said of course
That one time late at night he'd seen
a young girl on the porch

And it must have been a ghost he laughed
I shivered in the cold
and the snowflakes fell like ancient tears
on South December Road

Something in my heart remembered
long forgotten sins
as they echo through those empty rooms
and scatter in the wind

There's a branch that's barely hangin
from a dying chestnut tree
and it sways before the window where
your bedroom used to be

And I drove the old man's Plymouth
through the tired Midwestern snow
and you met me on the corner down
on South December Road

Now that drug store up on Main Street
has that sign above the door
they've been satisfying customers
since 1934
We drank cherry flavored cola's there
when we were seventeen
but that soda fountain's gone now
so a bought a magazine

And I walked down toward the graveyard
as the wind began to blow
and I stumbled across the headstone
nearly buried in the snow
And your face filled up my memory
and a phantom filled my soul
like the cracks that filled the sidewalk down
on South December Road