| Once upon a recent time
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| With days to kill and a long long drive
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| The detour to where he once was mine
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| I found myself back in Salida.
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| There was a man with eyes like the sea
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| The green and gold of summer weed
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| Who held his heart between his teeth
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| There was a man who once chose me
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| Brick fall in at the back of the bar
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| . |
| like a river folded arms
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| His arrow stare tore me apart
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| Off my course broke both our hearts
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| But the second time around
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| We held each other underground
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| In the shadows of the city lights
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| My ring-burnt skin his covered eyes
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| Like a dream that rolls down hill
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| We tumbled headfirst as we spilled
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| Still we tried to hold on to the wind
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| I never saw him again.
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| Now with time to spare and a borrowed car,
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| Skin tight aggrieving heart
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| From another love, another time,
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| I retraced the steps I’d left behind
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| Went back to that mountain town,
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| I whispered his name to the threatening clouds,
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| Trying to conjure up that underground
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| Afraid to speak his name out loud
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| It was a place where time had slowed
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| Now its cafes are vintage clothes
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| And I knew who I’d come here to let go,
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| And left long ago.
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| We tasted then the desire and rage
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| Like actors on off-Broadway,
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| This time I knew more was at stake
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| Alone I chased regret and age
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| I tried to trap them in my songs
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| But always got the timing wrong
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| So now I’m chasing down where I belong
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| To pay my dues before I’m gone
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| Chasing all the untied ends
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| I’m chasing them down so they blurring blend into one great love
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| I’ll make amends and pull back from the edge again
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| And heal the thing that stuck and broke
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| The knot it’s always in my throat
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| A country on the verge of an overthrow
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| Rusted belly of a sunken boat
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| And in the last light of that winter’s day
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| I lit a match and I watched the flames
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| From the biggest fire that I could make
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| Made a coyote breath, a river.
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| The Hudson Line, the …
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| The Cumberland, the Arkansas, traveled a long way from Tennessee
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| To settle this free.
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| Once upon a recent time
|
| With days to kill and a long long drive
|
| The detour to where he once was mine
|
| I found myself back in Salida,
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| In Salida
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| In Salida |