It’s a big fat cheat to use another creative’s words. But when they are better than your own, when they say all the things you are too afraid to say at the moment, you let them carry you. Thank you, Joan Shelley and Carter Sickels — Carter, without you I would never have found this song.

***

A spring remembered, the taste of gin

An island light upon our skin

Your form it lingers, I trace just where you’ve been

The songs we sang I’ll sing again

When it breaks down

Oh, babe, let’s try

To see the beauty in all the fading

I saw the river thick with mud

Break through the banks and run

And I confess I liked it, I cheered the flood

When the waters hit the walls and won

When it breaks down

Oh, babe, let’s try

To see the beauty in all the fading

The roads are endless, they seem to grow

Vines that wind around the world

And though I hate it to leave my home

I love that car when I need to go

When it breaks down

Oh, babe, let’s try

To see the beauty in all the fading

And old Kentucky stays in my mind

It’s sweet to be five years behind

That’s where I’ll be when the seas rise

Holding my dear friends and drinking wine

When it breaks down

Oh, babe, let’s try

To see the beauty in all the fading

When it breaks down

When the stakes get high

To see the beauty in all the fading

Joan Shelley, The Fading