Iceland

Last night I dreamed of icy cliffs
Standing on the precipice
I leaned to see just where the edge would take me
The wind came up, I closed my eyes
I heard a shout and to my surprise
A hand reached out and pulled me back to safety

What's a hand, what's a dream
Who can say what it means
When everything that you know
Can disappear
Don't look back, the spirits cry
Just be glad to be alive
Everything that you love is right here
Everything that you love:

Life feels smaller than this stone
Worn smooth inside my palm
I keep it like a charm inside my pocket
I keep thinking I'll flame out
Leave no one with a doubt
That I was meant to fire like a rocket

What's a stone, what's a flame
There's always someone else to blame
When everything that you know disappears
Don't look back the spirits cry
Just be glad to be alive
Everything that you need is right here
Everything that you need:

When I'm left here on the shore
The ancient basalt moor
Will beckon me to sleep among its heather
Who's not tempted to fold in
So that sleep may come again
Where the fire and the ice hide their treasure

Everything that you love
Everything that you need

--Mary Chapin Carpenter (1958- ), American singer-songwriter and poet, from her album The Age of Miracles (2010) She explains this song here.

Jericho

You can't see me yet
Seeing takes a long, long time
From the outside in
Measuring each shift and sigh

But as you let your eyes adjust
To the darkness deep within
Sifting through the ash and dust
We are the places that we've been

You can't hear me yet
Listening takes a long, long time
And I've so much to tell
But words die on these lips of mine

But in the stillness you may sense
Every thing I long to say
Unraveling like golden threads
The walls will all come down this way

You don't know me yet
Knowing takes a long, long time
And time is all we have
Never traveling in straight lines

So memorize each turn and twist
Just be careful as you go
For if love is a labyrinth
Then my heart is Jericho

--Mary Chapin Carpenter (1958- ), from the album Ashes and Roses (2012). Chapin's notes about this song can be found here.

Scriptural reference: Joshua 2:1-6:27.

New Year's Day

We are sitting at a table in a bar in Baltimore
It's the last night of December
And the room is nearly full
And the front door pulls a draft in every time it opens wide
And you are telling me a story
From another time and life

And the waitress brings our order
And we're tucked in mighty close
And I feel like we belong among
The living and these ghosts
And I know that I am dreaming
As I memorize each part
In the telling lies a reverie
In the details lie the heart

Like the folds of summer dresses
Like the scent upon my wrist
Like the way you played guitar
Like a boxer punches with his fist
And taken or just lost to me
It's better now to say
I dwell in possibility
On New Year's Day

There's a jukebox or a bandstand
And we're on another round
And the night's just getting started
Or the night's just winding down
And your stories are not clouded yet by the ale
Or by the gin
They just make me feel as if I've known you
All my life again

Like the folds of summer dresses
Like the scent upon my wrist
Like the way you played guitar
Like a boxer punches with his fist
And taken or just lost to me
It's better now to say
I dwell in possibility
On New Year's Day

And this is what it looked like
When we started walking home
The night sky bleached to silver
Against the city's bones
In dreams or in our waking
It's just enough to say
Love and grace and endless flowers
Be ours on New Year's Day

And the folds of summer dresses
And the bangles on my wrist
And the way you played guitar
Like a boxer punches with his fist
And taken or just lost to us
It's better now to say
We dwell in possibility
On New Year's Day

--Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ashes and Roses, 2012

Deep, Deep Down Heart

How do you know what you know
because you've seen it with your eyes?
How do you know where to go,
how to identify your guides?
How do you see what was next
In your palm or a show of cards?
How do you learn to detect
The outlines of a scar?

Now the sky holds the night,
As the trees hold the shade.
And the road holds the map
Of every journey I've made.
And the clouds hold the sigh
Of the wind and the rain
In my deep, deep down heart...
My deep, deep down heart.


Now these wheels go so fast
There is nothing here to hold;
I keep pushing back the past
So that the future can unfold.
I guess the best of my mistakes
Show me all that I don't know.
But this strange kind of ache
Never seems to let me go.


And the sky holds the night,
And the trees hold the shade,
And the stars hold the light
That's traveled all this way.
But who holds my hand
So I am not afraid
In my deep, deep down heart
My deep, deep down heart?


I thought I heard my name
Walking late tonight
From the porch after the rain
In this rowing down the light.
There was no one standing there
Beyond the lantern's cast,
But just voices in the air
But just questions that ask,


How the sky holds the night?
How the trees hold the shade?
How your sleep holds your dreams
Till they shake you awake?
And how love holds you up
And then to chooses to break
Your deep, deep down heart...
Your deep, deep down heart?

--Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Things That We Are Made Of, 2016