White Innocence

(album: Catfish Rising - 1991)

She drifted from some minor festival.
Didn't look like any sumrner of love:
just a thousand weekend warriors in a muddy field.
She was the hand to fit my glove.
Funny thing, the innocence of the lonely.
Funny thing, the charm of the young.

See how she moves just like two angels (in white innocence).
Yet one of them is on the run.
The other's tapping at my car window
and I'm squinting through the sun
trying to see if she's some child of the nineties:
or just another dangerous fantasy of mine.
Yeah. White innocence.
She was white innocence.

A perfect hole was in her stocking:
it made a perfect window to her heart.
I could have moved among her waterfalls:
her misty curtains drawn apart.
Did she see warm safety in my numbers
to want to hitch a ride this way?
Felt like I was taking her to market now
to be sold as the last lot of the day.
Funny thing, the distance of the lonely.
Funny thing, the charm of the young.
White innocence.

She pressed the button, lowered the window:
let her hand trail in the slipstream of the night.
A frost from nowhere seemed to lick her fingers:
I could have warmed them, but the moment wasn't right.
Obvious, she was headed nowhere special:
yes, well it was even obvious to me.
I was doing some, some watching, some waiting:
she'd been here before, most definitely.

There was the promise of early bed-time.
There was the promise of heaven on earth.
Think I was sending out low-voltage electricity:
played it right down for what it was worth.
She turned and looked at me in white innocence
and with the clearest eyes of forever grey
she rested one small hand for a second on my knee:
I stopped the car. She walked away.
Funny thing, the wisdom of the lonely.
Funny thing, the charm of the young.
Away you go now.
White innocence.