[Verse 1 - Urgent Double-Time] Don't ask me which evening I fell for, which door or which glow I believed-- I knew all the songs, sang along every one, knew the far light apart from the flame that deceived. But knowing the trap in the map ain't the legs to run free when you grieve-- so something soft in a coat spoke my name, and I stayed, and I stayed, and I stayed. That's it. [Verse 2 - Double-Time Breaking] The hurting quit early, before the web even finished the wrap-- old song called it: I hung like a lantern and watched the whole dark go slack. Moon poured silver down the rigging, lit each crossing and each trap-- and I read the whole map in the morning with nowhere on that map left to go. [Verse 3 - Single-Time] When she was done she let me drop--no anger in it, no amen, no sound-- and the fall didn't fall like a fall, felt more like a door coming unbound. The ground took all I'd become and never once asked me where I'd been-- first thing to hold me completely wanted nothing back. Let that sink in. [Verse 4 - Broken Cadence] Then the rain came down like rain comes down--on the burrow, the bean row, the snare-- roots picked the knots out of me like those roots had always known I was there. No part came back as it left; return is not repair-- part of me climbed the bean row green toward the brother's fire part went riding the far fields, wide as the air. I rise with the morning now. [Refrain - Plain Sung] Down through the dark, up through the grain, out with the morning, down and home again. [Verse 5 - Nearly Spoken] So when first light hits a web and every hidden crossing glows, that's some of us turned to water, wrung from the ground where everything goes. No part comes back to claim a body, no name comes back that anyone knows-- we couldn't keep ourselves, dear neighbor, learned too late how to run-- but we make the lace confess each crossing soon as the morning shows. [Final Verse - Beatless Spoken] They told you: keep one foot on solid ground. I know now what that ground is made of, hear how it sounds-- what you call solid is the gathered weight of all of us that came down. So put your foot here, living one--you don't have to know our names. We couldn't keep ourselves from falling. Now we're the ground beneath your frame. Let us hold your living weight. Keep your road. Keep your name. [Final Refrain - Slow Sung] Down through the dark, up through the grain, out with the morning, down and home again. Down through the dark... up through the grain... Out with the morning... home again. [Outro - Voice Alone] I knew the songs. Sing them anyway.
