Air of Spring

With a nickel in the pocket

With a tune on the tongue

You can go down walking

Run away flying

to where the stars are hung

With the left boot on the left foot

The right worn on the right

You can plant your steps

like seeds, from the kiss

Of morning ‘til the dawn of night

When the shadows fall and the old ghosts

call you up to give your tears

When your hands are empty

Your dreams are bare

Cold whistles whistle there

You gotta take the past from off your back

Pack up the days to come

Where the sun is blonde

The sky’s blue eyes

There’s music dancin’ on the tongue

Y’see I’ve watched my friends all turn

like leaves in the autumn breeze

And I’ve watched the lovers

fade like rainbow colours

When that arc dries and leaves

But I pull my cap onto my head

and I turn my head around

And break from the sad

deserted days

For where the air of spring in found

Now my blood is a mountain bird

I feel it rise and soar away

And my feet are winged

All the world is mine

As I walk a soft kiss of wind and say":

There’s nothing that won’t drift your way, no

Nothing the days won’t bring

And you can say I’m crazy

You can say I’m lost

but better, blame the air of spring

Yeah, you can say I’m crazy

You can say I’m lost

but better, blame the air of spring

1981

The Green Album

Clear as the Air

Last winter you loved me, invited me in

When the cold was a hard and angry spinner of winds

And I was a lonely singer of songs

Spinnin’ tales of lost love’s angels

every night ‘til the night was gone

Now it’d be easy to say I never doubted our dream

I often sing for the sound, forget what I mean

But the dream while it lasted was clear as the air

Now it’s over and past, we’re free as the air

Blonde hair was sea-froth and cloud in the sky

Your legs flashed like razors

your scarlet skirt slit to the thigh

And a harsh wind was stilled when I stepped in your room

Turned warm and sweet the moment

you pulled me into your arms

Now it’d be easy to say…

What started with white sheets and oceans of time

Streetlight and starlight pouring

through the window like wine

Now turns with the drumbeat of seasons again

To distances and silences, another

harsh winter wind

And it’d be easy to say…

1982

The Green Album

Dawn Song

There’s wakin’ in the windows

There’s mornin’ in the bells

There’s dreamin’ in your eyelids

as sleep still holds you under her spell

There’s a callin’ in the sunrise

And memories lace the air

And there’s a movin’ in my highboots

and a lilac laced in the braid of your hair

I’d fallen with the lovelorn

Found loneliness holding me down

But my sadness quickly melted away

the first night you took me, held me all around

The nighttime quickly travelled

And dawnlight started to sing

As the sky began to open its eyelids

bringin’ the first rays of our first days pouring in

Now there’s a wakin’…

You opened with your body

I opened with my mind

And we passed and drank the love between us

as we passed and drank the time

Now the skies are clear and the winds blow free

And I gotta be movin’ on

But the feelings living within me

and I’ll see you again before long

Cause there’s a wakin…

1978

rec “Green Album”

Seasons of Glass (for James Wright)

Autumn comes from Summer

The leaves they turn to brown

I took my bottle to the river

and I drank that whiskey down

Water swirls

The night wind curls

Sky grows black and wild

Strong as a prayer

To a god who isn’t there

I am neither father nor child

Water flows through Summer

and it freezes up past Fall

I drank that bottle empty

and it did me no damn good at all

Dusk moves in over daytime

Stars start to shine above

Later moon cast the colour of a white wine

Breathed to make me dream cold love

Mouth opened round

Gave birth to no sound

Lost in a jar of sleep

Eyes rolled back

Stared at all that I lack

And the kiss of shame tongued deep

Dreams are made in the daytime

Turn to fear by the light of the moon

I gathered up the bottle of a lifetime

Drank the empty taste of empty doom

1978

The Green Album

(The) Widow of Raven Cliff

When the sea winds blow and the air shivers cold

There’s a woman walks the wild salt air

Her eyes are full of fire, stare silent at the stars

While the wind whips and lifts her horse-black hair (and it’s…)

Bring me the flowers of moonlight, she wails

Bring me the milk of the stars

Bring me the child swelled a thousand sails

Bring me the wreck on the shore

When the sea rears and roars, dark waves like horses

Charge at the black cliff stone

She steps from her shack onto Raven Cliff’s back

Slices like a knife through the wind alone (and it’s…)

Bring me the diamonds of old sailors’ bones

Bring me the grins of their skulls

Bring me the silk of the green seaweed crowns

Bring me the beached rotten hulls

Well they talk in the town of how many men drowned

How that tossed her life dead-black

Now she walks on the cliff, troubled as the wind

That no net of song can bring a dead man back (and it’s…)

Bring me the harbour of little girls’ dreams

Bring me the mist of the bay

Bring me the voice that beckons men out to sea

Bring me those lost on the way

Now I’ve no tales, empty as slack sails

Only truth fills my song

And I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and I sing what I’ve seen

This of the night before they found her gone

It was a sin-black night, waves running wild as fright

And drumming with a song that she sings

When sure as I’m here, she just disappeared

Like a lantern’s flame blown out in the wind (still I heard…)

Bring me the use of the gull’s dip and rise

Bring me the flash of the fin

Bring me the sweat of the rocks on the sand

Bring me my man back again (and it’s…)

Bring me the truth of the gull’s wailing cry

Bring me the flesh of the wind

Bring me the echoing cries of the damned

Bring me my man back again

1980

The Green Album