I was thinking about the time when
we sat under the trees at the service station
I was blinking in the bright memories
of those mornings of migration
I haven't been there for two years
I spent the summer on the ground
I couldn't keep those big ideas
along the tight lines of the town
And the starlings went through
everything that I had
Take the mistle down from the wayside,
take the key down from the wall.
Take the tower from the hillside,
take the matches from the drawer.
And the low sun on the hillside
turns all the windows gold
And I'm walking in frost shadows,
kicking bottle tops down the road
I was cutting through the cornfield on
distant mornings scared of snakes
And I wrote it all in pencil and the
rain washed out the page
The reflections in the water and
the daylight through the leaves
And the cold air of the autumn
are the things that I believe
And the starlings were so loud that they
drowned out all of my confusion
Like the darkness that you get round
bright lights in black and white television
It was the sound of carbon hand slate
It was the sound of a thousand winds
Above the concrete and dry clay
And I forget about everything
And the lightning stood be
side us on the hill
Take the blankets, take the road maps
Take the apples from the bough
Take the feeling, you will come back
Lay the rest out on the ground
And the stars shine in the cold frost
And we are abstract for a while
But there's so much that will be lost,
so let's come down from the sky
And we'll walk out through the evening,
so we know we are alive
Cause there's nothing going to keep
us from rolling into that good night
Take the vessel down, take your memories,
give them to me while you can
Cause there's nothing you can keep now
It rolls on now, it rolls on
you