Gardener's Calloused Hands

Lyrics

[Intro]
Nineteen twenty-two.
The parlor is warm against the November grey.
And the hands, they gather around the table.

[Verse 1]
These are not idle hands that meet today.
Here are the hands of Mary, a callous on the thumb from her favorite trowel.
Here are the hands of Florence, with a faint stain of berry juice that won't wash out.
Hands that know the heft of a spade in stony soil,
the precise pressure to firm a seedling in the earth.
For years, they have spoken a silent language with the ground,
each one in her own small plot.
Now, they rest on the polished wood, holding teacups.

[Chorus]
And these gardener's calloused hands, they raise to cast a vote.
These hands that mend and weed and sow, now write the first line in the notes.
This is more than a cutting shared across a fence.
It's a promise made in common sense.
The Sudbury Gardeners Women's Club, finding its voice.

[Verse 2]
The talk is of the bare patch by the town hall,
and what these hands could make of it by June.
Of the library steps, needing color.
Of a seed exchange, so a prize dahlia can spread its roots through the town.
It’s the private work made public,
the solitary strength made fellowship.
The knowledge passed from palm to palm,
no longer just a whisper in the wind.

[Chorus]
And these gardener's calloused hands, they raise to cast a vote.
These hands that mend and weed and sow, now write the first line in the notes.
This is more than a cutting shared across a fence.
It's a promise made in common sense.
The Sudbury Gardeners Women's Club, finding its voice.

[Bridge]
And I see the ghosts of other hands in this room.
My mother's, her knuckles swollen from the cold spring planting.
Her mother's, tough as old leather from a lifetime of tending.
They never sat at a table like this, never had their labor named.
But every weed they pulled was groundwork,
every seed they saved, a prayer that led to this very day.

[Outro]
The first meeting is adjourned.
A motion passed.
One hand, stained with earth, closes the new leather ledger.
The work begins again.