Blue Highway

From the Album Run For Freedom and Slow Night

SShadows dance on the rose
Traveling down this winding road
To return going home
Along the Blue Highway

Source of life, gift of love
To the sea she must run
To return from above
Along the Blue Highway

Along the Blue Highway, my friends
Along the Blue Highway
To return back again
Along the Blue Highway

Ides of March rushing down
Flooding out river towns
Life and death goes round and round
Along the Blue Highway

Along the Blue Highway, my friends
Along the Blue Highway
To return back again
Along the Blue Highway

Black and white, red and yellow
Blue above, green below
All are one within her flow

Along the Blue Highway

Along the Blue Highway, my friends
Along the Blue Highway
To return back again

Along the Blue Highway

Words & music by Larry Long
Copyright Larry Long Publishing 1982 BMI, Renewed 2018 BMI

Untitled by Bill Holm

I
River, you were calm
as a blind grandmother
humming over your knitting
for long October days
while the last red leaves
fell into your lap
and floated south.

II
A bird made of water,
your wet stone wing
flap out to guard
the thousand islands
of sand and sumac
where fires are kindled,
stories told; love made.

III
Three old friends sat
in a boat beneath an umbrella
reading Mark Twain
to fish who stayed in
your muddy stomach
and would not be charmed
out into the grey light.

IV
But then, going north,
you tried to kill us
and I loved you best
the hard grey chop
of your hundreds of hands
trying to soften the meat
before you eat at last

V
Whatever else, you are alive:
aorta of the continent
pumping out muddy blood
of cattle yards, corn fields,
and black sinkhole towns
grown up like barnacles
on your whale skin bluffs
Source: River Circular | Mississippi River Revival

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