Hi Everyone!

Joe's link was to Travis Edmonson's website at www.travisedmonson.com, where you'll not only hear the song sung, but also a recitation by Travis of the poem which he always did when performing it. The words (below) are great, but just LISTEN to him speak it. It was originally written about nuclear matters, but sounds even more appropriate today with not only a myriad of environmental threats, but the old nuclear issues still hanging around. (Iraq? Iran?)

Hear the recitation at
http://www.travisedmonson.com/time.htm

And both are available on CD from his album "Travis On His Own." All proceeds go directly to Travis, who's been paralysed since a stroke in 1982, and who is now also coping with advanced Parkinson's Disease. Info about all the Bud & Travis CDs at above website.

Warm regards

Chantal

THE TIME OF MAN

It's not nice to speak of troubles that happen in our time,
Or to mention the contention that we're slipping as we climb.

But I'd like to take this moment here and now to share a thought
That might not mean much now, but later on, might mean a lot.

Think of the house you grew up in, and the block and the town and the state.
Think of the people you knew there, and the taste of the food that you ate.
Think of the places you've travelled and the things that you've seen that were great.
Think of those things that you love right now, because memory always comes late.

The things that we take for granted like the sky and our friends and the sea;
Everything that you know that's clean and everything that's free.
Because all of these things have been frozen in time and cheated in history.
We're dooming these things to die, and pretending not to see.
We're ringing down the curtain on life By ignoring catastrophe.

The sabre tooth tiger, the mastodon and man. All extinct.
And now, you and I will be known as the link that missed. Not the missing link.

And what will be left if it comes to that of the things that we have known?
A molten earth? A shoreless sea? A powdery dust to be blown
Out beyond the planets where the other dead stars are blown?

Now, think back to those things we were trying to recall.
And think of those same places and things without any life at all.

A little rag doll, lying still in the dust.
A guitar in the corner, muted with rust.

A rattling rose bush dead by the door,
A half-broken comb grinning up from the floor.

A paper-strewn floor, shifting round in the wind,
Half covered with glass where the windows blew in.

A ghost town where there was once money and mirth?
No, this is what's come to be called a ghost earth.