“Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true,
 Or is it something worse?”
  Bruce Springsteen, ‘The River’.

I was raised out by the station
Where the foothills meet the sea
By people who thought it prudent
To commute to the factory.
I took her to the shoreline,
I took her to the peak,
We watched the muddied waters,
We looked out on lands to seek.

 Just then our two lives were a scaffold
 Round a ruin to rouse
 A model from the scaffold
 Our house.

The summer before I met her
I worked my neighbour’s building site
To learn an honest labour
Despite my future being bright.
As the dust caked up my airways
And my blisters filled and burst
I stood and wondered why it would feel a lie
If I thought I could do no worse.

 That night I climbed up on the scaffold,
 No ladder, no rope,
 I took down the scaffold
 And hope.

I carried on self-destructing
Angry from deep inside
Where all my troubles gathered
And silently would hide.
Her patience and strength it bound me
With every stormy test,
She gave my feelings meaning
And allowed my soul to rest.

I remember us walking at the harbour side,
Her bright green eyes upon the rolling tide,
And as we discussed what lives to make
The hands we held together would shake
And that moment it now torments me,
It tortures me like guilt;
If the strength of love is the lack of fear
Then nothing would be built.

 Today we stand up on the scaffold,
 Destiny and us,
 We stand upon the scaffold
 Groundless.