Isn't That What Friends Are For?

(Album: Breakfast In New Orleans, Dinner In Timbuktu - 1999)

Heavy northern autumn sky
Mist-hung forest, dark spruce, bright maple
And the great lake rolling forever to the narrow gray beach

I look west along the red road of the frail sun
Where it hovers between shelf of cloud and spiky trees
Receding shore

The world is full of seasons; of anguish, of laughter
And it comes to mind to write you this

Nothing is sure
Nothing is pure
And no matter who we think we are
Everyone gets his chance to be nothing

Love's supposed to heal, but it breaks my heart to feel
The pain in your voice
But you know, it's all going somewhere
And I would crush my heart and throw it in the street
If I could pay for your choice

Isn't that what friends are for?
Isn't that what friends are for?

We're the insect life of paradise
Crawl across leaf or among towering blades of grass
Glimpse only sometimes the amazing breadth of heaven

You're as loved as you were
Before the strangeness swept through
Our bodies, our houses, our streets
When we could speak without codes
And light swirled around like
Wind-blown petals
Our feet

I've been scraping little shavings off my ration of light
And I've formed it into a ball, and each time I pack a bit more onto it
I make a bowl of my hands and I scoop it from its secret cache
Under a loose board in the floor
And I blow across it and I send it to you
Against those moments when
The darkness blows under your door

Isn't that what friends are for?
Isn't that what friends are for?
Isn't that what friends are for?