O Mary Don't You Weep

O Mary Don't You Weep

If I could I surely would
Stand on the rock where Moses stood
Pharoah's army got drowned
O Mary don't you weep

O Mary don't you weep don't you mourn (2x)
Pharoah's army got drowned / O Mary don't you weep!

Moses stood on the Red Sea Shore
Smotin' the water with a two by four / Pharoah's army...
     The Lord told Moses what to do
     To lead those Hebrew children thru...
God gave Noah the rainbow sign
No more water but fire next time...
     Mary work three links of chain
     Every link was freedom's name...
When I get to Heaven, gonna sing & shout
Nobody up there to put me out!
     One of these mornings, it won't be long
     You're gonna call my name, but I'll be gone...
One of these days 'bout 12 o'clock
This old world's gonna reel & rock...
     One of these days in the middle of the night
     People gonna rise & set things right...

Coming from both the Old and New Testaments, this song and other recent songs prompts me to imagine an echo that literally travels through time. The song comes from the belly, and is passed to a set of ears which take the song in and pass it through the belly again and so forth. And this is how the song is passed and digested through time and through bodies. Decades and all kinds of people and somehow to us. The breath and the strength of O Mary Don't You Weep travels through us when we sing it to lift us up, so lucky.