Cash

I'm a Johnny Cash fan, and from time to time I converse with people who are also fans, but who don't much appreciate his final albums, especially the last two or three. He sounds old, they say, and worn out. I want to remember him young and with that powerful voice. What's to like about him later on?

Here's one shot at an answer.

Listening to the Johnny Cash of "Hurt" and "The Man Comes Around" is like listening to the wind blow through a tree in late autumn. Most of the leaves are gone and those that remain whisper where they once spoke out loud. The whisper and the bare limbs scratching at a leaden sky suggest life at its end and are only ghosts of the swelling green surf that waved in blue summer seas.

But even so thin and pale a ghost holds the shape of its history and its whispers echo a real past. Though it sounds and looks bare now, its strength roots in earth and days and it minds not illusions of feebleness and age. It has an ancient power unbound by time and one day will green again.