Sailing away

I re-did this because the first version was hard to hear. I wrote this song about my mom two months before she sailed away on her final voyage.

Sailing Away

The twilight flows in
Through the big picture window.
The moon, like a boat,
Is sailing the sky.
The bright evening star
Is leading it onward:
A picture as fair
As an old lullabye.

She sits in her wheelchair
For hours by the window,
Watching the moon
And the stars golden light.
Though her body is failing
Her spirit is soaring,
Sailing away
In the deep purple night.

When she was a child,
She lived by the ocean
And gathered the waves
With her shovel and pail.
But when she grew up,
She moved to the prairie
And dreamed of the waves
Where her spirit could sail.

When I was a child,
She taught me the star-rhyme:
I wish that I may,
And I wish that I might.
But the sweetest of wishes
Are the ones never answered,
The longing as rich
As the blue evening light.

What is she wishing,
Tonight by the window,
Watching the moon
And the star sailing by?
Though her body is failing,
Her spirit is happy,
Sailing away
In an old lullabye.

--Karen Deal Robinson
March 12, 2009
(describing the evening of February 27, 2009)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• desert silvery blue
• cowboy's lullaby
• Badger Clark