Ruby Falls

(album: Saint Cloud - 2020)

I take flight on borrowed time
I was once terrified of heights
I say a prayer, I look down and I'm ready to die

If you cross over tonight
You see beyond the darkest sky
You taste the blood as something wild and alive

You might light up in a flash
You won't hold onto a flame
It's a squalid way to live but it's the rules of the game

It ain't your fault
It's just a shame
To fall without aim

I walk down east seventh street
A wistful, wild depravity
Iconoclastic, black and white, dusty and sweet

I tell this story every time
Real love don't follow a straight line
It breaks your neck, it builds you a delicate shrine

You might mourn all that you wasted
That's just part of the haul
Tangling up all your good fortune, bearing the heart of the fall
You won't break it after all

Look at us, man and bride
And a grinding sound
Faithful to a life underground

And when the picture fades the years will make us calm
I'll sing a song at your funeral
Laid in the Mississippi gulf
Or back home at Waxahatchee creek
You know you got a friend in me
I'm an angler married to the sea