Potter's Wheel

(album: Josh Ritter - 1999)

I close my eyes and it all returns like the spinning of a potter's wheel
trying to stay ahead a morning as time came running with us
and she beat us to the finish as we ran through the fields
you were born in the city and you didn't recognise me
your beauty unexpected like a flower in the concrete
some gods far below the worlds undiscovered
set you up to ruin temples to find me on the streets
I'm an alias of who I am a counterfeited fake
in the picture I am kneeling like a dying saint jerome
hurling rocks at the demons who tried to come too near
till you came in and possessed me now I feel at home
I remember the time I walked for seven hours
and thought about the people I had known for so long
all the castles I had built of of fine and precious sand
till you came in like the tide now I don't care that they are gone
as we floated up the river I translated the verses
that were written on memorials for the ships that had sank
and I thought about the people that traded sinking for uncertainty
and drowned because of loneliness before they reached the banks
on a beach near Barcelona the young girls cry for mary
and they bury earthen vessels in the rocks by the sea
I am sending out a bottle with a prayer upon the waves
that you'll find inside my picture and your memory will unfold me
we were talking about a trip that I had taken to the canyons
and you told me of a river that had cut through time
leaving only the pictures of long dead sons and daughters
and you told that the paintings looked a lot like mine
I try and watch myself to see what I am saying
but my heart is on my collar and I'm asking you to take it
I don't want to go back to the way things were before
before the dawn turns into morning I want you there to break it
and a thousand years from now when our names are just a memory
and poets have recorded what happened in the past
lovers loving in the night will find our forms in constellations
seekers seeking for salvation will find our stories in the stained glass
a boy in the city who has never seen the morning
as he's running arm in arm with you through the fields
will be caught unexpected by a flower in the concrete
it will all return again just like a potter's wheel