Almost home when I missed the bottom stair You were braiding your gray hair It had grown so long Since I'd been gone And the perfect girls by the pool, they would protest The cross around their necks But our sons were overseas And we all know about the hive and the honeybees Almost home with an olive branch and a dove You were beating on a Persian rug With your Bible and your wedding band Both hidden on the TV stand When a cruel wind blew, every city father fell Off the county carousel While the dogs were eating snow All our sons had sunk in a trunk of Noah's clothes Almost home and got lost on our new street While your grieving girls all died in their sleep So the dogs all went unfed A great dream of bones all piled on the bed And the cops couldn't care when that crackhead built a boat And said, "Please, before I go May our only honored bond Be the kinship of the kids in the riot squad"