Blood Creek to Roanoke

To them that it ever mattered

They gave up keeping count

Of the storms that followed the spine of the eastern divide

Raised up by God and underlying pressure

The forces of nature and the battles they wage against each other

All the while

Storms and sunlight rotated  

And them men

All that ever mattered 

Traced the curves of her and laid their tracks

From Blood River to Roanoke

Stitched along the wild places between ‘em

Blowing through granite and limestone

Clearing cotton and hard pine 

Spanning chasms of twisting spring silver

 Released from their places between the fields and the heavens

Who knows what side they’d fall

Seeping into the sandstone and washing away layers of silt

Dispersed back into the waters

They burn back by the sun to the sky above them

And all that counted the storms came and went

Between Blood Creek and Roanoke 

Them trains run hauling steel and cotton 

No living things just the inert and stacked and stored away

Incapable of being anything other than a set of plans and some other structure not of their own design

With no hearts to mind or thoughts to tend

Those things graced or doomed to roll heavy down the line

Between Blood Creek and Roanoke 

Got no choice in the matter

Its done been decided

Like the course of the storms and the anchored sun

Set alight by the forces of convection and gravity

Universal predetermination

And them unnatural scars the men that came and went constructed between Blood Creek and Roanoke

Some things there just can’t be no way of telling

History books and their purposeful misrepresentations

Lies and misdirection’s

Sleight of hand and the despair and isolation

And the losing count of the storms and the track of the sun

The calculations of things that never mattered

Courses set and timelines determined

Preordained to lay side by side and silent

You carry your weight

I’ll carry mine 

Laying here just the same 

Between Blood Creek and Roanoke

It wasn’t any choice I made

Just the curve of the earth

Storms I lost track of

Rain falling by happenstance on one side of the continental divide or the other

Ain’t no way of tellin

I swear there ain’t no way of knowin it’d be that way

And I’d end my runnin

Laying here just the same 

It wasn’t any choice I made

Just the curve of the earth

Storms I lost track of

Rain falling by happenstance on one side of the continental divide or the other

Between Blood Creek and Roanoke

And you know

As you grow older

Maybe 

Developing storms

And heavy freight trains

Run off path and off their tracks

And maybe

In the dark of the coming fall mornings

You find the things you kept in line

Broke south of Blood Creek

Just east of Roanoke

Ain’t no way of tellin

I swear there ain’t no way of knowin

Just losing your bearings of the storms

And the tracks

Laid long ago

Side by side

You carry your weight

I’ll carry mine 

Laying here just the same 

Between Blood Creek and Roanoke