On a day when the waves are unfurling
and the wind curls around the Battery Hotel,
and the shadows of clouds are cartwheeling
down the side of Signal Hill,
oh come with me, my darling,
we’ll walk the North Head Trail.
Oh walk with me, oh walk with me,
through the Battery, past the apple trees,
walking backwards against the wind
to where the houses trail off and the trail begins,
Past the crevice where the pigeons preen
and wish they were lucky as albatrosses,
to the cliff where seagulls wheel and scream,
drape bedrock with bedsheets of shit and salt,
and sometimes sleep, and sometimes dream
of Ron Hynes singing St. John’s Waltz.
We’ll find a song, we’ll find a song
in the whistle of wind as we walk along,
in a plunk in a bucket when a berry drops in,
in the crack and crash of an iceberg collapsing.
The hill catches fire in the autumn
with little red leaves that flicker like candles
and lick at our sandals like fiery tongues.
Wind tumbles them into incandescence
and they glow at the edge of our vision
as the sky burns to embers around us.
Like a dandelion, like a dandelion,
the trail bursts up through rock to find the sun,
and blooms into a bright windswept horizon,
so close your eyes and stick your nose in.
credits
from Topiary,
released February 28, 2017
Lyrics by Matthew Hollett
Vocals by April White
Recorded by Michael Venart
Guitar by Stephan Walke
Support Vocals by Virginia Mitford
On “Meet Me By the River,” Dawn Landes’s self-described “Nashville record,” buoyant country melodies settle deep into lush instrumentation. Bandcamp New & Notable May 7, 2018