Old Light ✨

[Verse 1 — intimate, spacious] You kept Polaris in your pocket, held it up against my sky, said, “There—you see the way now,” like direction taught you why. But north can hold all winter without waking up the ground. You can show a root the sunlight. You can’t talk it into coming out. And I loved you like the earth does— warm below the frost and stone, making shelter out of instinct, even when it wasn’t home. [Pre-Chorus] You were right about the compass. You were wrong about the clock. [Chorus] North was never the problem. We could see it every night. But Polaris can point all winter; it cannot hurry spring to life. You kept measuring my wingspan by a sky I couldn’t hold. A fledgling looks like failure if you only count what flies. North was never the problem. We were looking at the same light from two different places at two different times. [Verse 2] There are blueprints in a chrysalis no witness gets to read, whole arrangements made in darkness with no evidence they’ll breathe. You stood outside the silence waiting for a wing to show. I was losing old instructions I no longer needed to know. Maybe neither one betrayed it. Maybe nothing missed its cue. Some things die inside their shelter if you tear the shelter through. [Pre-Chorus] You were right about the compass. You were wrong about the clock. [Chorus] North was never the problem. We could see it every night. But Polaris can point all winter; it cannot hurry spring to life. You kept measuring my wingspan by a sky I couldn’t hold. A fledgling looks like failure if you only count what flies. North was never the problem. We were looking at the same light from two different places at two different times. [Bridge — sparse, almost spoken] Funny thing about the heavens— some stars die before their light gets here. We stand beneath them centuries later, call them beautiful, call them constant, make wishes on what has already changed. Maybe I did that with you. Maybe you did that with me. By the time the light arrived, neither of us lived at those coordinates anymore. [Final Chorus — restrained, opening gradually] North was never the problem. And neither were the wings. February isn’t faithless for refusing to be spring. What once kept the small thing living could not hold what it became. No anger for the shell behind me. No need to give it blame. North was never the problem. We were never truly lost. Some directions lead you somewhere you were only meant to cross. [Outro — nearly bare] Polaris still points north. Spring came when spring came. And somewhere, an old star is finally reaching Earth. I don’t make wishes on it anymore.