"Rocket Man" By Tom Rapp (from the Pearls Before Swine album "The Use of Ashes", 1970) My father was a rocket man He often went to Jupiter or Mercury, to Venus or to Mars My mother and I would watch the sky And wonder if a falling star Was a ship becoming ashes with a rocket man inside My mother and I Never went out Unless the sky was cloudy or the sun was blotted out Or to escape the pain We only went out when it rained My father was a rocket man He loved the world beyond the world, the sky beyond the sky And on my mother's face, as lonely as the world in space I could read the silent cry That if my father fell into a star We must not look upon that star again My mother and I Never went out Unless the sky was cloudy or the sun was blotted out Or to escape the pain We only went out when it rained Tears are often jewel-like My mother's went unnoticed by my father, for his jewels were the stars And in my father's eyes I knew he had to find In the sanctity of distance something brighter than a star One day they told us the sun had flared and taken him inside My mother and I Never went out Unless the sky was cloudy or the sun was blotted out Or to escape the pain We only went out when it rained My father was a rocket man He often went to Jupiter or Mercury, to Venus or to Mars My mother and I would watch the sky And wonder if a falling star Was a ship becoming ashes with a rocket man inside My mother and I Never went out Unless the sky was cloudy or the sun was blotted out Or to escape the pain We only went out when it rained My father was a rocket man He loved the world beyond the world, the sky beyond the sky And on my mother's face, as lonely as the world in space I could read the silent cry That if my father fell into a star We must not look upon that star again My mother and I Never went out Unless the sky was cloudy or the sun was blotted out Or to escape the pain We only went out when it rained Tears are often jewel-like My mother's went unnoticed by my father, for his jewels were the stars And in my father's eyes I knew he had to find In the sanctity of distance something brighter than a star One day they told us the sun had flared and taken him inside My mother and I Never went out Unless the sky was cloudy or the sun was blotted out Or to escape the pain We only went out when it rained "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard P. Feynman