When the next wave breaks

Words & Music (c) David Harley

Backup:

 

Pretty much made up as I went along, so I’ll probably be doing more work on it.

When the Next Wave Breaks 

I’m nothing but a ripple
A stone thrown in the sea
When the next wave breaks
You can’t tell where I’ve been

There’s a change in the weather
There’s a restless angry sea
There’s no changing you
But there’s surely been a change in me

I’ll take that lonesome highway
By the light of a lonesome moon
You know the sooner you start crying
The sooner I’ll be gone

When the sun is going down
And the moon begins to rise
I’ll be so far down the road
There’s no shadow left behind

There might be just one woman
Could make me want to stay
If you were her, my bag
Would not be packed today

 

 

There will come soft rains

Backup:

 

Sara Teasdale‘s poem ‘There will come soft rains’ has haunted me since I came across it as a boy, quoted in the Ray Bradbury story of the same name., and eventually I had to put a tune to it This article now has what is probably the final recording of this version rather than the rough demo. Here’s the poem.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.