Young Danny's Gun

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For Christmas this year I received a gun.
No fancy wrapping or bows to unspun
This one belonged to my uncle long gone.
Been sitting in the vault for 40 years some.
No one would take it, and to me it had come.

My uncle, he loved that gun-I could tell oh so much
By the clean steel barrel and carved wood struts.
What a beauty-It shined in the light.
I could see my reflection if I held it just right.

'Can take a cow elk at 400 yards!'
Is what my father said at Christmas
Through the other gifts and the cards
This one didn't compare in the least.

as I held it up and peered through the scope
'It'll group in a dime if you take the time!'
I put it down and ran my hand on it in wonder
How in the world did I inherit this plunder?

No one wanted this gun that belonged to my mother's brother.
He died on that mountain without saying goodbye the others.
It was an accident- the little boy had cried
He couldn't hold on and in seconds he died.
Slipped like a rain drop on the rocks way up high.
No one would question; who then could try?

Danny was 18 when he left his family
Had just graduated high school; he lived wild and free.
He took his gun everywhere, even way up on the rocks
He could see the world up there and take a steady shot.

But after that day someone hid it away
and no one had the guts to pull it out.
Everything they loved about that wild young boy
was in the gun that he loved.

It's 40 years since and it has now come to me.
It was a sad sad day the last that it had been used-
and Young Danny's gun will always carry proof
of how he loved and lived
In how he cleaned his gun
For in the reflection of that barrel
Is the bittersweet song he had sung.