Ship of Light

In the Carolina darkness
I feel a sudden peace.
The wind sings in the trees
and I think of you, the friend I knew,
sleeping far away.
You kicked me when I was down,
but that don’t matter any more.
I’ve reached this open shore
and from my room I see the moon
dancing across the bay.

It’s a ship of light, coming to carry me away.

The dark cicadas sing
beneath a mackerel sky.
They echo my goodbye
to everything I could not bring
or carry on my way:
The praise I never got
for the music that I played,
the money I never made –
I'm setting all that free
into the silver sea.
I'm letting my forgetting
hold me in its tender sway.

Cause my ship of light is coming to carry me away.
My ship of light is coming to carry me away.

When you saw me on the corner, I was playing for change.
I knew pretty soon I’d leave the city.
You said, "It's sad to see the hard time you've been through."
I said, "I don't know exactly what that means to you,
I just know the beauty I love is the beauty that I do –
so you don't have to look at me with pity."

Now my lonely lantern flickers
in the roaring of the gale.
This song to you is frail
but it is true, and that will do
until some other day.
Don't you know all I wanted
was to be loved as I am?
I do not give a damn
about who you hoped I'd be
because I know you’re just like me,
struggling to be free
to love your destiny.
So I hope that you can see
that though I'm gone tomorrow's dawn
will find our love okay.

Because that ship of light is coming to carry us away.
That ship of light is coming to carry us away.
That ship of light is coming to carry us away.

Tam Lin