Sunday morning in the city park
Bread crumbs in my little girl’s hand
Pigeons waddling, ducks on the water
Simple things I hope she’ll understand
She’s laughing at the geese all honking
Pointing at a butterfly nearby
Then a crowd gathers ‘round something
And I see wonder light up in her eyes
Old man with a crooked nose like Scrooge
Strings wrapped ‘round his bony hands
Mechanical bird dancing on those wires
One wing blue, one wing red
He pulls the blue one faster, bird tumbles left
Pulls the red, it tumbles right back over
Crowd applauds like it’s the greatest show
But she saw it’s just a trick, not living clover
She asks, “What kind of bird is that, daddy?”
I kneel down, look her in the eye
“It’s called Politics, my dear, it’s not real”
She goes quiet for a while
Then asks me soft and serious
“But if that’s not real, what is?”
I point down at the grass beneath her feet, love
That caterpillar, butterfly
Those geese and pigeons walking by
That’s real, my dear, that’s real
Old man’s packing up his puppet show
Crowd moves on to something new
But she’s watching that caterpillar climb
Seeing what she always knew
Our children come here knowing things
We had to learn the hard way through the years
We believe these fake circus distractions
While they’re waiting for our hearts to turn
She asked, “What kind of bird is that, daddy?”
I knelt down, looked her in the eye
“It’s called Politics, my dear, it’s not real”
She went quiet for a while
“But if that’s not real, what is?”
That caterpillar, butterfly
Those geese and pigeons walking by
That’s real, my dear, that’s real
One wing blue, one wing red
Tumbling left, tumbling right
But the living birds just keep on being
What they are in the morning light
Now when the puppet masters gather
And the crowds all clap and cheer
I remember what she taught me that day
“What’s real, daddy? What’s real?”
The grass beneath our feet, the butterfly
Geese and pigeons walking by
That’s real, my dear
That’s real