Till Tuesday

One night in Iowa, he and I in a borrowed car

went driving in the summer, promises in every star

out in the distance I could hear some people laughing

I felt my heart beat back a weekend's worth of sadness


There was a farmhouse that had long since been deserted
we stopped and carved our hearts into the wooden surface
we thought just for an instant we could see the future
we thought for once we knew what really was important Am

Chorus:

Coming up close

everything sounds like welcome home

Come home and oh, by the way

don't you know that I could make

a dream that's barely half-awake come true

I wanted to say -

but anything I could have said

I felt somehow that you already knew

*** Verse 3:
We got back in the car and listened to a Dylan tape
we drove around the fields until it started getting late
and I went back to my hotel room on the highway
and he just got back in his car and drove away

*** Chorus:
Coming up close
everything sounds like welcome home
Come home and oh, by the way
don't you know that I could make
a dream that's barely half-awake come true
I wanted to say - but anything I could have said
I felt somehow that you already knew

*** Coda
Coming up close
everything sounds like welcome home
Come home

Coming up close
everything sounds like welcome home
Come home Come on home

||: C2 G :||

Forgive me

this is how it revolves around the sun
and spins on its axis
this is how time is measured
in molecules in motion
and one day after the next
we age we grow frail
this is how it devolves
every moment every second
escaping
into the nothingness of the past
were it not for memory
we would be fading
along with the sunlight
we would be just another revolution
with our faces to the sun

Of cartography and crayons

He reached into his pocket and removed the map. It was old and faded, directions written in his childhood. Last night, he found it among the many memories from his youth, carefully saved by his mother in a large brown trunk. Today he would follow the map. Five steps South from the big willow tree, turn right and walk twenty steps West. Forty years later, what would he find?

wintertime motorcycle blues

Cooped up crazy inside this smalltime warm world when outside it freezes and thaws and separates the men from the loonies like me the one with bored looks and twitchy legs.

Jets before the Moon

December and cold, the planet continues its path around the sun. I have nothing to report other than the chill air and expectation of snow. We have had an unseasonably long Autumn, now we will pay the price. The moon is above us, like the eye of God, looking down and scolding the sleeping children for not storing up more spiritual treasures. The glow of reflected sunlight signals that behind us, on the other side of the world, billions are waking to the morning. It is December and cold, and besides this simple report about a moment in time, when a jet glides in front of our disenchanted satellite, there is nothing much else to say. Sleep on, little children.

Shooting Star

He was crazy of course
From the first she must have known it
But still she went on with him
And she never once had shown it
And she took him off the street
And she dried his tears of grieving
She listened to his visions
She believed in his believe-ins

Oh, he was the sun burning bright and brittle
And she was the moon shining back his light a little
He was a shooting star
She was softer and more slowly
He could not make things possible
But, she could make them holy

He was dancing to some music
No one else had ever heard
He'd speak in unknown languages
She would translate every word
And then when the world was laughing
At his castles in the sky
She'd hold him in her body
Till he once again could fly

Oh, he was the sun burning bright and brittle
And she was the moon shining back his light a little
He was a shooting star
She was softer and more slowly
He could not make things possible
But, she could make them holy

Well, she gave him a daughter
And she gave him a son
She was a mother, and a wife,
And a lover when the day was done
He was too far gone for giving love
What he offered in its stead
Was the knowledge she was the only thing
That was not in his head

He took off East one morning
Towards the rising sun's red glow
She knew he was going nowhere
But of course she let him go
And as she stood and watched him dwindle
Much too empty to be sad
He reappeared beside her saying,
"You're all I've ever had"

Oh, he was the sun burning bright and brittle
And she was the moon shining back his light a little
He was a shooting star
She was softer and more slowly
He could not make things possible
But, she could make them holy
Holy

By Harry Chapin