Daniel West - The Things We Keep

There’s a box up in the closet

With a ribbon that’s gone gray

A Christmas card from someone

I haven’t seen in years these days

There’s an ornament with one side cracked

We never threw away

And a little wooden soldier

Missing half his paint

There’s a stocking with a name on it

From a child who’s grown and gone

A photograph with bent-up corners That somehow carried on

There’s a candle that we only burn

When everybody’s here

And somehow every little thing

Gets more important every year

It’s the things we keep

When the years move on

The little bits of yesterday

That somehow make us strong

We don’t keep them because they’re perfect We keep them because they’re

ours

A box, a song,

an old photograph

A ribbon from a Christmas long ago

There’s a recipe

in Grandma’s handwriting With a stain across the page

And somebody wrote “Don’t forget the cinnamon”

In letters that have faded with age There’s an old record with

a scratch in it

That skips the same way every time

And when it reaches that little skip

Everybody knows the line

Someday somebody else will find them In a closet somewhere too

They’ll wonder why we saved these things And maybe

they’ll understand too

Because time doesn’t fit inside a picture

Or a letter or a song

But somehow when we hold them

We can feel where we belong

It’s the things we keep

When the years move on

The little bits of yesterday That somehow help us carry on

We don’t keep them because they’re perfect We keep them because they

remind us That we were here together once

And somehow we still are

So leave that old ornament hanging

Let the photograph stay there

Some things don’t need a reason

They just need somebody to care

(soft

hummm)