Cogs and Candle Cards

Verse

We sit on crate stools by a guttering candle,
Grandma shuffles cards with a thumb gone hard as brass.
Tommy swears he won with a pair of jacks before the sirens,
Maggie folds and says he cheated—golly, what a gas.
The lamp smoke curls like a postcard from the old city,
A wind-up clock ticks two beats past the curfew time;
Outside the bunker the sky smells of soot and airships,
And the boiler down below sighs like an old upright rhyme.

Chorus

We start again by the hiss of a piston and a wick,
Counting matches and pennies and promises thin as tin.
We'll lace up our boots, crank the cogs, mend a radio click,
Sing loud, pour the tea, let the new town begin.

Verse

Pa deals the next hand with a grubby thumb and a grin,
He hums a marching tune about boilers and brass gears.
Maggie hides three hearts beneath her sleeve like a secret,
Tommy blinks at the candle and laughs away his tears.

Chorus

We start again by the hiss of a piston and a wick,
Counting matches and pennies and promises thin as tin.
We'll lace up our boots, crank the cogs, mend a radio click,
Sing loud, pour the tea, let the new town begin.

Bridge

spoken word

When the ledger is blank and the maps are all burned,
When the attic's a hatch and the skyline is turned,
We make a street from scrap, a church from an engine hood,
We teach our children the names of the things that we could.

Chorus

We start again by the hiss of a piston and a wick,
Counting matches and pennies and promises thin as tin.
We’ll lace up our boots, crank the cogs, mend a radio click,
Sing loud, pour the tea, let the new town begin.