The Clearings

Standing in the doorway
Looking through the rain
Women and the children wailing
Looking at the redcoats
Coming down the glen
The red and white
The muskets knives
To change our lives

I worked this land
Till it blistered my hands
To find my returns were meagre
No government man
With a paper in his hand
Can move me on?
Can take my home?
And all I own

They say America is opportunity
They need the land for sheep they own
So I must leave all I've known or die

Now the soldiers come
With their papers and their guns
To lay them here before me
A look in the eye
Of my children and my wife
I sign away
That which is mine

Standing on the ship
Looking to the shore
Knowing I'll never see it anymore.