Bell Swamp Connection

(album: Getting Into Knives - 2020)

Toward the tail-end of the age that's almost finished
Where the highway starts to crack and nobody fixes it
I was wandering through an undeveloped tract
Out near the ocean
100 acres, we will build to suit
See what there is to see before it's gone
Somebody's always just about
To put some kind of awful plan in motion

Eastern redcedars, and the pines
And suddenly an elevated stone slab
In what must have been a clearing once
Try to recognize the signals and the signposts
My curiosity
Will likely always get the best of me

It's like that one thing
My Dad kept trying to tell me
As the twilight
Inched its way on up his body

Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!

Well of course I climbed atop the slab and I lay down on it
I am a child
I had my face toward the sky lying there in the sun with both my eyes closed
Woke up in near darkness
What the hell is wrong with me
Volunteer pines in the hundreds in the dusk like military tentpoles

Let my eyes adjust
Try to read the markings on the slab
Weird alphabets I felt sure I hadn't seen just before I passed out
Stars growing brighter
Me looking up
Like a lobster in a cage down in the depths beneath the bottom of a glass boat

And I heard a voice
From somewhere out beyond the free fall
Like a captive soldier
Trying to warn his brothers

Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!