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MB-EP (2009)
Woodsman and the Seafarer
A kiss on the forehead. My body won't leave the shore when hers floats upon the largest of the Great Lakes and north towards Michigan where many young women go to see what from their life the city will make. I watched from the bedrock as Virginia F. Wesley Medlock steamed black smoke cloud circles in the sky and took to my cabin in the secluded forest land where I cried myself awake the rest of the night.
Oh My.
Nine years have gone by since that middle of July and I've still not seen a call or heard a letter. When out of sight and out of mind, though, all the memories slip by and forgetting what was good can make you feel better. I finally took down all her photos and knick-knacks in the corners and I burned them in a barrel by the river. Then I put my feet on the gravel and to the nearest town I traveled to find a yellow-haired girl that could replace her.
Oh My.
A year later I was married a Spanish woman named Clarize, with hair not blonde but for now the brown'll do. She quickly moved all her things in empty spaces I had cleaned then came a card from a seasick lover I once knew. It read "a decade's gone by and I've never spent a night with another man or thoughts that weren't of you." I wrote I could "say the same, I did my best to lose your name, and I'm trying hard to begin my life anew."
Oh My.
The news did not go over good. It was a chilly night in the woods when I heard sticks break 'neath footsteps from the outside. I ran to the kitchen, turned the light on, Seafarer stood there with a shotgun and said, "You're wrong from your side and I'm right from mine." She put one bullet in my chest and second through her head after screaming, "We'll be together again above." Our bodies laid there on the floor as on the roof the water poured. It's too late to say I never gave a shit about love.
So you think you're gonna be lonely 'til the day you die? Won't you take it from me? I've been lonely all my life and I swear I'm doing just fine. I haven't stopped drinking in three weeks time, haven't had a job since nineteen eighty-nine, and everybody knows my first name down at the unemployment line.
Well, don't you worry bout me. I'll find the prettiest girl, you'll see, and she will love me.
I've been searching this country's land looking for a woman who needs a worried man, who will take me and wrap me up inside the palm of her hands. She's gotta hop a freight like you've never seen before, never storm out our house's front door, with the longest shiny hair that's hanging down to the floor.
Well, don't you worry bout me. I'm just a man who likes to dream about what I've never seen.
Over two states is both Carolines but I do believe I'm headed back to the land of the pines–I'm off to Minnesota to find that little gal of mine.
Do you remember the night at the park when I kissed you but it was too dark to see if you smiled and to feel my legs for a while? Do you recall outside your place when you kissed me and grabbed my face and I swore if it wasn't love, then no one had ever felt like I was?
Would you think it's weird if I grew out my beard and I called myself your man?
In the attic I found an old banjo. In the basement, an age-old microphone. I thought that we could start a band and go on the road and we could call ourselves The Lovetones.
Would you think it's weird if I grew out my beard and called myself your man?
Washburn County Line
I will place my backside on a five-gallon pail just to stare at a hole in the lake for the better part of a whole day. I will walk through the snow to town–five miles up, five miles down–to try and bring back my river gal, the one that makes my heart beat loud. All the way from the Washburn County line, so I've got someone who says she's mine.
Loneliness never felt too good until you know it's fleeting like you knew it was and it no longer takes sleep to get your mind off what it didn't need. Far off in the distance my eyes see chimney smoke from a cabin nestled in the trees. Phonograph plays my favorite tune, river gal a-coming soon all the way from the Washburn County line, so I've got someone who says she's mine.
I met my love north of Hibbing town in a rusted elevator that was going down into the mines.
When I was young my daddy told me, "Son, you need to go to the city and get an education and a girl that's looking fine or you'll be married to those mines."
I woke up midnight. Oh, what a sight. I woke up to my wife packing up in the night. Then I look out the screen door and see nothing but taillights. She left me alone in a cabin 'neath the pines.
Many years they had passed since I'd seen her last and then I'm reading the newspaper, a headline that read "fifteen missing, seven more dead." That girl was buried in those mines.
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Don't You Worry Bout Me