long-time love

since i don't seem to have too many of my own words this week, i'll go with what looks like becoming a tradition on fridays - something from bruce cockburn...

A Long-Time Love Song

Can't trace this conversation --
Words fragment and fall
Into blue shadows by a white-baked wall.
Through shimmering spaces a single thrush calls --
A song when it's over is no song at all

And you know I long to feel that sail
Leaping in the wind
And i long to see what lies beyond that rim
Oh, ever-new lover and friend
Sing me that love song again.

Time measured in summersaults
And flickering kids' play --
Cross-world and southward it's a fine summer day
Translucent life-span evaporates away
To bead on the cool grass in a cyclic ballet

bruce said about this song:

"There was an old people's home near where I used to live in Toronto - sometimes walking the dog late at night I'd come upon them loading a body in a long black hearse. Only at night. In the light of afternoon, you could see them enjoying the large garden. One wizened gray couple was always holding hands and looking at each other so romantically that it had to be a song."

(from "All The Diamonds" songbook, edited by Arthur McGregor, OFC Publications 1986)

this is a song i want played at my funeral. it connects with my heart-song in a way that no other song does. i love the counterpoint between the images of the transient and cyclical nature of life in the verses and the yearning for something more permanent, "ever-new", in the chorus. it is a beautiful expression of a yearning to be free of the confines of this present life.

there's something in me that really identifies with this longing to "feel that sail leaping in the wind", to know the wildness and freedom of life "beyond that rim" (images here of reepicheep at the end of the voyage of the dawn treader from c.s. lewis' narnia series).

i can't imagine a better articulation of 'what it's all about' than the final lines of the chorus: "ever-new lover and friend, sing me that love song again". this is the purpose and goal of all god's dealings with his creation, the expression of his perfect and undying love, for ever renewing and being renewed.