“The greatest stories come from trying to make your
own contradictions meet and get along.” – Barbara Hall

If symbolic language is new to you, we’ll use this song to help you better understand it. 
In this poem, a group of boys are doing all the stupid things that boys do, never recognizing the extraordinary danger. Death is represented as a prairie dog they disregard and as a cobra they play with. The boys grow older, graduate, and go their separate ways. Many years later, one of them begins to realize that Death is looming larger, casting a longer shadow, and gazing in his direction.

The Prairie Dog of Death

When I was young and invincible,
Death would pop his little Whack-a-Mole head up
And we would laugh the laugh of boys
who know they cannot die.

We would hunt for him sometimes,
To see if we could tickle the chin of the cobra
And not be bitten. And not be bitten.
And not be bitten.

The music of the snake charmer
evaporates into the atmosphere
on the day the band breaks up and
everyone goes their separate ways.

We went our separate ways.

College and marriage and working and making (money)
and “taking a gap year,” whatever that is.
Those are the reasons the band broke up.
and the super heroes,
the super heroes,
went their separate ways.

Their separate ways.

Yesterday is gone and today has arrived.

Heraclitus said
you cannot step twice
 into the same river.
The same river.

It is now a different river.
The river is different.

“I’m not even sure it is water any more.”

The gaze of the prairie dog
lingers a little longer now.
Death always knew that I was not
invincible.

Death knew I was not invincible.
But now I know it, too.
Oh, now I know it, too.
I know it, too..
i know it…

The prairie dog has gotten taller, taller, taller.
The prairie dog has gotten taller, taller, taller.
The prairie dog has gotten taller, taller, taller.

And his shadow
stretches to the horizon.
To the horizon.
horizon.
horizon.
horizon.

© Roy H. Williams, Tiny Tribe Music