Nothing Can Hold Back the Land

Nothing can hold back the land

So dig it with your toes and hold it in your hands

Like a river beats the back of every dam

Ten thousand generations still sing “remember when”

I was so afraid you didn’t care

But I read between the lines and now I see it everywhere

We are seeds under the asphalt, waiting where

The cracks grow all around, so flower if you dare

A war inside, but peace in the air

It is whispered, inside and outside

By the fearless and the wild

The songlines

Who will win out in the end

Nothing can hold back the land

So dig it with your toes, she holds you in her hands

Someday our cities sink in sand

You can take man out of nature, but never nature out of man

A war inside, the heart and the hand

I trace the songlines through a forgotten forest

In and out of my mind, rewinding tracks to the chorus

Pave over their trails, but the deer still know

Silence their songs, but the hills still echo

A war inside for the real conquerors

It is written in rivers and in our bones (the songlines)

Can’t hold back the grizzly and the wolf (the songlines)

It is sung on the wind in silence (the songlines)

Can’t hold back the wild inside us (the songlines)

Man brings love to the land

The land brings love to man

Peace and Possibility

Did you really think I’d fade away?

I’m more like the sunlight in the spring

All that ever drives my feet’s to convince myself of things I believe

The funny feeling of being you and me

A solitary sight I seek, to find out what it means to me

To believe in peace and possibility

But for now, I’m standing at the gate

Just to see inside before I’m turned away

Please, I’ve been taking faith

That I’m not wrong to want to feel OK

Like maybe someday I’ll deserve to stay

But no one answers so I walk away

Sometimes it seems to me, I’m abandoned here in mystery

When in the mirror I can’t tell what I see

But someday soon up to the task

I know I can remove this mask

To see peace and possibility

But for now, I’m standing at the gate

Just to see inside before I’m turned away

Please, I’ve been taking faith

That I’m not wrong to want to feel OK

And maybe when I don’t I’m not to blame

But no one answers so I walk away

I can see, the door is round and wide

People step to either side

If you can believe it with your eyes

In me, a joy as wide as spring

The headlight of a train

Ask for what you really need

Wolves

My heart cries out to you from within the cage I call myself

My heart cries out to you and it echoes over the frozen hills

My heart is a wolf that’s gone insane

No longer wild but never tame

Won’t you answer, I know you speak his language

Won’t you answer, won’t you let him come running home to you

Can’t you see, how I’ve been wounded by the world

Just like you

Can’t you see how the world has hurt me too

My love is a wild rage, it splits the night then sounds no more

My love is a tidal wave without the sand to crash ashore

And this old wolf’s been caged so long

He forgot his cry was once a song

And all it takes, I hear you sing

And you can turn me wild again

We are wolves, trying to get along alone

We are out here in the cold

Starving for love

Won’t you answer, I know you know the notes

Won’t you answer, won’t you let me come running home to you

Can’t you see, how I’ve been wounded by the world

Just like you

Can’t you see how the world has hurt me too

My heart cries out to you

Won’t you answer?

I’ll Meet You There

Fir trees and frozen grass

A blanket on the ground

Our hearts the only sound

Your face and the moon

But I tried to make you summer

When you were still just spring

I found a song to sing

But I sang too soon

We’ve known it from the start

The hole in my head, the hole in your heart

The wind that pulls your hand from mine

What was it that you said?

To keep me in your heart instead

When from the start I never had a choice

Like kids, we jumped in

But frightened by the night

We zipped the bag up tight

And we hid from the wind

But the wind is all that sings

And though the saddest song it had to bring

The mystery is more beautiful

When you see what’s really real

Beyond ideas of right

Beyond ideas of wrong

There is a field to lay your soul

And when the soul lays in that grass

The world’s too full to talk about

Even the words “each other” disappear

Beyond ideas of right

Beyond ideas of wrong

I’ll meet you there

Somewhere we’ll always be

Hiding in that two person bag

And I have yours and you have my love

Sleeping inside

Though I know you’ve walked into the night

Left me far behind

To find the beauty in this life

So we step into the mystery

There are secrets on the breeze

So don’t go back to sleep

Alchemy

I am the ocean and you are the moon

Without you I’d never move

I can’t understand the way that you dance across the sky

I don’t know the words

You say only inside

But I’ll tell you mine

When

Do I

Get to

Kiss you

You make me wonder and I haven’t a prayer

Like thunder dissolves in the air

But I wonder like when I was a kid

When it’s all I ever did

And there’s an alchemy

There’s a way to take the pain

Deep inside of me

I can turn my fear to faith

I don’t know the words you say only inside

But I’ll tell you mine

When

Do I

Get to

Kiss you

Gone wholly blind

Till the truth peeks through

Songbird

A songbird landed in my life, for a time

I can’t decide to smile or cry when she takes flight

My fear’s a fist inside but still my hand remains

Outstretched my palm up to the sky

And there I see my love, my love come alive

It is not what I take, but what I give that’s mine

Land your heart and overwinter in my hands

And from this frosty field you and I will never stand

I thought I knew just what I wanted from the world

Until I chased the midnight sun into the cold

A songbird landed in my life, for a while

And there’s no song I wouldn’t sing to see her smile

I am erased in flames and yet my hand is still

Outstretched my palm up to the wind

And there I see my love, my love take flight

It is not what I take, but what I give that’s mine

Land your heart and overwinter in my hands

And from this frosty field you and I will never stand

I thought I knew just how the story’s supposed to go

Until I chased a trail of gold into the snow

Fly, songbird, fly

I can’t believe I hold all this inside

Fly, songbird, fly

You may not be a bird in the next life

And there I see my love, my love come alive

It is not what I take, but what I give that’s mine

A songbird landed in my life, for a while