Songs of Lancashire
One day, out of somewhere, someone like you,
Over the rainbow, a whiter shade of pale, at last,
A Wigan starlight, listen;
An unchained melody,
Above the clouds, suddenly.
The day I met you, I, Desperado, you,
Gentle Breeze, Lucy,
You’re a bridge over troubled water;
Below a moon river,
The climb, wind beneath my wings;
I don’t want to miss a thing.
Pie Jesu, “I have nothing;”
“I will never love again;”
Hold on, you sing, I will fix you
And give you a million dreams;
Oh, my heart will go on.
No matter, broken dreams,
No matter, how far I run;
No matter, sad, sad memory,
The way we were, defying gravity,
When walking life’s tightrope,
Amidst loneliness’s certainty.
Ladies, Lucy and Martha,
You raise me up in a world made of blue,
In the arms of an angel in search of what is true,
Hope in spite of life’s lows,
La Vie En Rose, Rose at Romano’s.
All by myself, but you sing let it go;
When Solitude hopes for the greatest love of all;
For on reflection, there you will always be;
Timeless, comforting me,
Like beautiful ghosts,
Translucent, as strong as the ebb and flow of the sea.
For Lucy’s smile brings a brand-new day;
While Martha’s face demanding, “say something, I’m giving …”
Chasing Hopelessness away while in Pain’s company;
I can still be in love and exclaim,
“Dear Lord, we thank you for this day.”
Ladies, I will always remember you from today.
Whether it be 10,000 hours or one-thousand years,
What a wonderful world, I whisper through tears;
But, still, we can change the world, our homeland;
Make it evergreen following the footprints in the sand,
The hero the world needs are your voices indeed.
Whether, I am never enough
Or the beauty in beauty and the beast,
I just cannot help falling in love
when you sing,
Can I have this dance?
How can someone you loved not run to you?
Someone young and talented hums,
“I will always love you.”
Alas, Lucy sings, make me feel my love;
I pray the prayer, singing hallelujah,
Soaring so far above.
Your voices carry hope,
The hope of love and joy,
Lifting us up over the grey clouds of burden;
The power of your presence makes life’s woes more enduring.
A dedication to singers Lucy and Martha Thomas
Earl Yarington (LMSW) is a social worker and school bus driver. He taught literature and writing for nearly 20 years and spent 3 years working in forensic social work internships with offending populations, including work at Delaware Correctional facilities and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He has a PhD in literature and criticism (feminism/women writers) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Master of Social Work from Louisiana State University, and an interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Arts from Arizona State University, where he studied the impact of visual image and girlhood in media/social media. He also has an MA and BS in English from SUNY College at Brockport. The opinions and analyses that Earl writes are his own and are not necessarily the positions or views of his employers, the agencies he supports, or that of his colleagues. Reach out with comments or questions.