The Gift

I wasn’t going home that particular
December
It was snowing outside and I remember seeing a man on the side of the road
He was tall and thin
And looked a lot like me
But with a tattered coat and ripped up jeans
He had lost his way and he had no home
He said “I was a man of fortune and fame
Everywhere I went they knew my name
I had everything I thought a man could ever need
But every Christmas season there’d be another reason
That I’d have to tell my friends that I wasn’t gonna see em
For another year or til things slowed down
Well they never slowed down,
they only sped up
And eventually my family and friends got fed up
And I was all alone when I started to fall
Well I fell so hard, I fell so fast
They say the higher you go, the bigger the crash
Like a tree in the woods, no one heard a sound”
Then he got real quite and started shuffling through his coat
Then he looked back at me and said here is a note
That I want you to read this time each year
Well I started to shake
cause I was startled to see
that the note I was reading was written by me
When I looked again he had disappeared
And it said:
Home ain’t home without your family
Christmas ain’t Christmas without your friends
Love ain’t something that you find beneath the tree
But it is the gift in the end