Old Pine Box (Sorrow Song)

When I'm gone, don't you cry
Please remember me with a smile
When I'm gone, don't you ask why
I just needed to rest a while
And this old pine box
Feels just like home to me


If you saw death coming 
        down the road
Arrayed so fine
If you saw death coming
         down the road
Why then you'd have to be blind
Not to know why this old pine box
Feels just like home to me

There's a magpie on the gallows
And an emptiness on the line
She's going to get to heaven before us
Without even hardly trying
I wonder if they lay her down in the ground
In a box made out of pine

For all the poetry of the placenames on this land
There's no place left for me here where I can stand
These words you wrote I once believed
Now I think they're just practiced to deceive
And I don't know anymore what it means to be free
This old pine box feels just like home to be

If just once you saw those plastic bags at night
Blowing through the trees like haints
You'd know why it feels all right
To lie here with all the dead and the saints
Seeing things with second sight
This old pine box feels just like home to me

Yes, the ice on the trees can leave you to shiver
But the stars in the sky can make a soul quiver
If you came out here just once
Then you would see
Why this old pine box 
Feels just like home to me

Each night at twelve, Jesus 
            comes walking
Then all these last souls to him 
            come flocking
And he forgives them for dying
Three by three
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me






It's been so long now I just can't remember
What year it was death stole my child from me
And whether it was the Spanish influenza
Or just that old TB
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me

Build a cross out of sticks, plant it in the ground
Come raise it again when the cold wind blows it down
Write her name on the marker
Or carve it on a tree
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me

And the people are kindly
Kindlier than you thought they'd be
Some of them leave red roses
And some of them leave tea
Some of them leave tears
And some of them leave whiskey
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me

For you don't have to walk in 
            this lonesome graveyard
For to hear this singing
Don't have to go to church
To hear them bells a -ringin'
Don't have to ask for whom 
            they're tolling
They toll for we
This old pine box
Feels just like home to me

I don't need no more of hope
I don't need no more of glory
The nightbirds serenade me
And the wildflowers they adorn me
And there's nothing so very special
About any of this history
That's why this old pine box
Feels just like home to me