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My Papa's Waltz

from Farewell Mountain by Ben Shannon

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lyrics

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrozen itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

credits

from Farewell Mountain, released June 11, 2016
"My Papa's Waltz," copyright © 1942 by Hearst Magazines, Inc.; from COLLECTED POEMS by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Music by Ben Shannon

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Ben Shannon Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Writing songs is a way of participating in a conversation about what meaning my little life and the world we all share might hold. Music has been a portal into the language of emotion. Songwriting, specifically, is a tool of survival that I've been able to use to manifest and maintain myself. These days I strive to be careful with the words I sing as they tend to have a way of coming true. ... more

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