1. |
River Otter
02:52
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River otter, maybe you were lost out on the edge of our old lake where the waves had piled driftwood through the long winter. We followed you for a while, we were trying to coax you near. In the shallow water you would stay and watch us pick up and lay down, lay down, the pieces that we had found. We found the morning warm like a sunlit room, our skin and the sand together. Gold and pale and gray and blue, clear water only moving on.
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2. |
Green & Blue
04:48
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Well on your way, you passed me here today. When the coffee swirls in your cup, it looks like the ocean's waves. You may always hide away, in some costal caves. Like the morning fog in the wind, may you rest, may you move.
Out from the sea, your hair was at your knees and when you spoke a single word, my spirit was assured that your kindness was as it seemed: every bit as deep, as the ocean's very bed where you sleep with the moon.
This morning you looked at me, I was still half asleep, just out walking by myself on that road to my father's house. Her eyes are green and blue, they will look inside of you and you'll feel just like a child trying to walk, trying to speak.
And when I was young, I'd dream of stars around the sun, I saw them in your smile still glimmering all the while. Your image haunts me on some days in mornings when I sleep too late, it sticks with me still, no I cannot get my fill.
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3. |
Follow Me
03:54
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Follow me, you are trembling. Walk on, let your feet fall in the patterns that I will leave. Stay close, stay with me. Crawl out onto the broken sea. Fingers on a turning page feels like your body out in the waves.
Picture a mountain rising before you, deep is its center, deep is its voice when it says -
There you are standing, grandmother before you. So ancient her language, her eyes appear like two mighty rivers reaching out for you to bathe in their currents, cut through the hills and valleys and -
And when you sleep you will hear those words differently: there in your darkness they glimmer with the seven sisters. And in their song you find yourself a ghost in life, to stubborn to walk on, to sleepy to wake up and
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4. |
Able Lover
04:38
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There in the window I stood watching all the rain smooth out the streets like glass, reflecting in front of me. My face was tired and mystified, and I could not recognize the unsettledness beneath my eyes and I wished I was a child again.
When I was just a boy I'd walk all afternoon and find about a dozen stones then give them all to you. You, in the house somewhere, you'd watch me coming home and you'd take my gifts and cherish them, you keep them even now. My pure & simple offerings were all that I could give so I gave them to you gratefully, my father who I love.
Strong, able lover, will I ever be a patient as you are, still giving endlessly? You are my father and I will ever be as faithful as a child, returning as the leaves to a tree.
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5. |
Summer Prayer
06:18
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Grace is deep in the cool of an August moon, rising low while my lips whisper their last summer prayer. Stuttered, slow, silently, soon to be asleep, in the arms of forgotten dreams that move your mind like a rolling wave. Along the floor of a misty lake, memories tend to live in the middle depths with the weekend sun placing light across your face. So hear my voice like the wind, circling my teeth, create in me a brand new heart.
I smell the way that my candle burns, vanilla as the leaves and petals of the flowers you picked for mom when she was sick. She put them in my third grade vase, right above the sink, where the window light might make them dance, playful in some summer sun. Well, I saw you there in black and white photographs you took of your friends, they were picking small berries off of Leelanau bushes in the sandy soil so close to the edge of Lake Michigan, its moving edge.
Keep your honest ways your innocence is something more rare than home made clothes that our grandma helped you sew up. I want to listen more, you are my only sister. The times we've spent alone are fleeting but remind me that grace is deep in the cool of an August moon, rising low while my lips whisper their last summer prayer. So hear my voice like the wind, circling my teeth, create in me a brand new heart.
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6. |
Mother, Father
03:52
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You would pray for me each night - since the day that you laid me out form your body to the ground. And when I think about it now, it's almost a feeling of being scared, terribly loved, but unaware of how much more you have brought me to this place.
So maybe this is what it's like, in some reflected way, like a shawdow in the day, to stand before a holy God and to hear your name like a mother's call - soft and smooth, sweet through it all. I'm being drawn to a place, I started hear so close to you.
And for my father, so different but still in one flesh. He's bound to my mother through joy and dedication, a stone foundation for me and my sister. And as I get older I start to see you like a growing mountain on a wide horizon in the sun.
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7. |
Feel it on the Wind
04:21
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I have moved not far away but it feels a little strange sometimes. Like, sunny days just seem to show the wrinkles in the clothes I wear.
I am scared not of my life but the fears that I now entertain. They are fears I do not trust, should I be even scared at all? for I was raised in a scared land the love my parents share is deep. Walk one day, I'd be halfway home where I could safely sleep for forty days and then awake to a room that would not have changed. The ferns still tall, the pines along the hill outside my window.
And I will have to ask for help, and I don't know what you'll say. I will feel so young again and you will feel it too. And it all seems so contrived, I can see them try to prove each other to themselves, I can see it in myself. And I can feel it on the wind, it tightens up my skin, you will hear it everyday in the pounding of the waves. And we will changed the way we speak - you will treat me as a friend, not the spirit that I was, moving in your very lungs.
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ANTRIM DELLS recommends:
The New Rise
by Strawberry Heritage
Gorgeous arrangement & songwriting throughout these lofty folk jams.
go to album
The Necessary Dark
by Ordinary Neighbors
Tender word-craft, dense, ornate, stunning attention to detail in this dream-folk-soundscape.
go to album
Backyard Songbook
by Backyard Songbook
Grand Rapids, Michigan folky super-group musings and b-sides surface in this tender, collaborative album.
go to albumIf you like ANTRIM DELLS, you may also like:
Zed For Zulu
by Those Pretty Wrongs
Jody Stephens of Big Star and Luther Russell of the Freewheelers team for a radiant LP packed full of slide guitar and pop smarts.
go to album
