Music for the Soul

I’ve discovered a new favorite “band”.  I put that in quotes, because it’s actually just one guy who does all the vocals and instruments himself.  The band is called Iron & Wine.  If you’ve seen Garden State, you’ve heard one of his songs called Such Great Heights (a cover of the song by The Postal Service).  That is now one of my very favorite songs ever – and I don’t pick favorites usually, because I love SO MANY songs.

Anyway, I’ve fallen in love with Iron & Wine’s music.  The lyrics are usually a hodge podge of words put together to kinda tell a story.  They don’t always make sense in a linear sort of way, but it still speaks to me.  This is music I put on to just get away from it all.  I’ve been using music for that end a lot over the past few weeks.  I don’t always know what to say myself, but certain songs seems to capture it all for me.  Other songs just let me float away and forget myself for a while.  Resurrection Fern by Iron & Wine is one of those songs.

In our days we will live
Like our ghosts will live
Pitching glass at the cornfield crows
And folding clothes

Like stubborn boys across the road
We’ll keep everything
Grandma’s gun, and the black bear claw
That took her dog

And when sister Laurie says “Amen,”
We won’t hear anything
The ten-car train will take that word
That fledgling bird

And the falling house across the way
It’ll keep everything
The baby’s breath, our bravery wasted
And our shame

And we’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire
Both our tender bellies wound in baling wire
All the more a pair of underwater pearls
Than the oak tree and its Resurrection Fern

In our days we will say
What our ghosts will say
We gave the world what it saw fit
And what’d we get?

Like stubborn boys with big green eyes
We’ll see everything
In the timid shade of the autumn leaves
And the buzzard’s wing

And we’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire
Our tender bellies all wound around in baling wire
All the more a pair of underwater pearls
Than the oak tree and its Resurrection Fern

Advertisement