River Of Money

(album: Spring Hill Fair - 1984)

It is neither fair nor reasonable to expect sadness to confine itself to it's causes. Like a river in flood when it subsides and the drowned bodies of animals have been deposited in the treetops, there is another kind of damage that takes place beyond the torrent

At first, it seemed as though she had only left the room to go into the garden and had been delayed by stray chickens in the corn. Then he had thought she might have eloped with the rodeo-boy from the neighbouring property but it wasn't till one afternoon, when he had heard guitar playing coming from her room and had rushed upstairs to confront her and had seen that it was only the wind in the curtains brushing against the open strings, that he finally knew she wasn't coming back

He had dealt with the deluge all right but the watermark of her leaving was still quite visible he had resorted to the compass then, thinking that geography might rescue him but after one week in the Victorian Alps he came back north, realising that snow which he had never seen before, was only frozen water

I'll take you to Hollywood
I'll take you to Mexico
I'll take you anywhere
The river of money flows
I'll take you to Hollywood
I'll take you to Mexico
I'll take you anywhere
The river of money flows

But was it really possible for him to cope with the magnitude of her absence? The snow had failed him bottles had almost emptied themselves without effect the television, a Samaritan during other tribulations, had been repossessed. But she had left her travelling clock though thinking it incapable of funcitioning in another time-zone; so the long vacant days of expensive sunlight were filled with the sound of her minutes, with the measuring of her hours