It's You That I'm Still Learning

Sweeping ashes in the mourning

Call me reckless in my burning

Call me forest fire season

Old growth cedar and new saplings

In coals buried and glowing

Who are you a long time coming

You are hands upon the headboard

You were stubborn years of yearning

And who am I but just a what if

Or a shy one sweetly reading

On the couch outside your office

An old book with new meaning

In my patience you are teasing

Will your words be my undoing

Feel me flowing like a river

You know I can't wait til morning

Watch you wrestle with your feelings

As I'm dreaming my desires

Will me, waiting for the ferry

To get off, this tiny isle

To you, the field, the mud, the dogs, the rain,

On repeat, rearranging

All the words that wander through you

Feeling up the endless page

And I don't want to alarm you but

My secrets are all showing

And my inner monologue is

The sequel to Desperate Living

I don't want to alarm you but

Your secrets are all showing

As you're blacking out, you whisper

"It's you that I'm just learning"

"It's you that I'm just learning"

So love me tender, love me sweet

Beneath acres of bedsheets

Where sleeping dogs are let to lie

In space meant for our feet

And read to me your favorite words

Those you've carried through the years

Through all death and near undoing

Well, the writer kept on writing

Penning futures yet uncertain

You fast forward to an ending

One of scorched earth, one of heartache

Why am I the one that's leaving?

Cause who am I but just a love song

With the same four chords repeating

Sunlight through the trees as you

Explore me every evening

Just one more lonesome voice

on your answering machine

Through the wires I'm still talking

Long after the beep

So what was this but one long daydream

Kept in line and always waiting

Eucalyptus on the tongue

And a memory of steam

Or a California coastline

With the cliffs slowly eroding

A house perched on the hillside

Trembling between its the beams

Or the moment in the sunrise when you say

we should keep on sleeping

Or the mystery in a sunset

When a pink sky flashes green

Or the ways that I adore you

And the feeling keeps on growing

like Arthur I am singing

"Love is overtaking me

And my heart pounds out your name

In the night"

In the night