Pale Green Things

(album: The Sunset Tree - 2005)

Got up before dawn
Went down to the racetrack
Riding with the windows down
Shortly after your first heart attack

You parked behind the paddock
Cracking asphalt underfoot
Coming up through the cracks
Pale green things, pale green things

We watched the horses run their workouts
You held your stopwatch in your left hand
And a racing form beneath your arm
Casting your gaze way out to no man's land

Sometimes I'll meet you out there
Lonely and frightened
Flicking my tongue out at the wet leaves
Pale green things, pale green things

My sister called at 3 AM
Just last December
She told me how you'd died at last, at last
And that morning at the racetrack was one thing I remembered

I turned it over in my mind
Like a living Chinese finger trap
Seaweed and Indiana saw grass
Pale green things, pale green things