Sea of Snow
©1973 Andrew Calhoun, recorded on Where Blue Meets Blue (lyrics reworked since the recording).
There's a sea of snow outside
A sea of snow outside
That troubles those who live
And covers those who die
It's blown up to your doorstep, from beyond the Northern Sea
It's turned the morning savage, and it's turned the moonlight grey.
And oh, my love Wanda is pretty and brave
And she never asks me for what I don't have
Sometimes she's white, and sometimes she's black
And sometimes I fear that she'll never come back
I saw a college boy skating on polluted lake ice
He had thin earmuffs on, and no look in his eyes
The snow shook with the wind, as it twisted and flew
On the surface of terror, where the boy twisted too
In a weathered old house, I sat in a room
painted white, where the cracks shone grey,
And I sang what I sang, and I sang what I must
And a teardrop rang out in a roomful of dust
And the floorboards sang,
"Glory to loneliness, Glory to pride, to shoes and to blues and to places to hide"
The incinerator's filled with wet, rotten rusty cans
The streetlight shone out through the fog to no end
In the eye of the pressure, people go different ways
Some run in crazy patterns, others smile all day
And some will worship on murderer's hill
Where a dead body glows in the luminous haze
The snow and the hail fell into the well
And hung for a spell
In the hands of black water
In a prayer that wavered and swelled.
There's a sea of snow outside
A sea of snow outside