Well maybe today this old world is just a gettin me down and people are just too much for me, so I headed right up to the top of a roof, just like the song, I guess. Found myself a distraction by doing some September generational habits, cleaning cedar shingles up on the roof. Thinking I could make things last just a little longer. Like the roof itself , or the memory of my dad’s hands splitting the shakes. Or maybe his voice telling me to let it go these shakes are done. I look at them the tight grain showing their age, so old , knowing we are never going to see cedar like this again. I move to the edge of the roof , close to where my dad had fallen off this roof 10 years ago , I cleaned some more needles from the roof. Then I heard the sound of a chainsaw starting up. Waited and heard the tree fall, then another , ah the neighbor is clearing for a home. So familiar this sound as I think of Dad and his time gathering these shake blocks from the salvaged trees left on the block after work. Thinking of all the old cedar trees he fell, all somehow echoing on the roof, hard to ignore up on the roof. Up on the roof for all the world to see.