New Song Debut: to mend two broken vessels with a single cherry tree (debut) and more

To Mend Two Broken Vessels With a Single Cherry Tree
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Music and Lyrics by Michael Angelakos © 2026

For Andre Dubus II

When I’m thirty-nine in May
Then finally I may be
Somewhere in between the man I am and could never be
‘cause in the end, that’s really it—it’s all that’s left
With the fear of god in facing down ourselves
When we learn there’s no exit

But here in April and on these high seas
Two galleons’ paths are wed
With nary a berth or dock for miles from these waters that I tread
And in all their disrepair we see their will is all their might
That bent their charted passings back
To converging here tonight

You take the ship’s mast she doesn’t need
And strip her sails, too, so she can breathe
Cause if she’s going to go then give to me
Give me just one thing:
Just let her help you mend so she can finally sleep

It’s pride that plunges help
Beneath this ocean’s self
That too was fractured years ago and its other half amounts
To its violent, calamitous remains
That this earth and its nature having wrought
Into mountainous terrains

But the buoyancy of you!
And the tenderness of you two
And both your passages through the middle of a loneliness that grew
To a rot, up above and then down below
But know: no one’s the weather
Though we may weather our own storms

You take the ship’s mast she doesn’t need
And strip her sails, too, so she can breathe
Cause if she’s going to go then give to me
Give me just one thing:
Just let her help you mend so she can finally sleep

And when I’m thirty-nine in may
All I want to see is everything the old man up there dwelling by the sea
Wanted to see: his girl cloud-bust that lingering storm of his
With a thunderous wave as my mother looks on

Let that windless, harrowing shipwreck of hers
And all the shrapnel free to collect
Be welcomed by you focusing on that which you possess
In the here and now—and in upturns or under duress
And let her lend her fragile hand before you build another one of us yet

You take the ship’s mast she doesn’t need
And strip her sails, too, so she can breathe
Cause if she’s going to go then give to me
Give me just one thing:
Just let her help you mend so she can finally sleep