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Remember the Mountain Bed Lyrics
Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves?
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds?
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves
Face, breast, hips, and thighs
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes
Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me
Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there
Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go
There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die
The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head...
I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands
I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.
All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds?
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves
Face, breast, hips, and thighs
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head...
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again
Song Info
Submitted by
pro-voice On Dec 15, 2005
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Perhaps the most beautiful lyrics I've ever read. Nothing beats these.
Check that... I meant Woody Guthrie... Also, the entire disc, "Mermaid Avenue" is all Woody Guthrie songs.
this could be one of the prettiest songs ever written. but i'm pretty sure that she was pregnant (Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air). Maybe she died there giving birth, or she died later with the baby. He obviously loved her, but thats the hand they were delt (My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain) The memories are precious and painful. He has been forced to move on, he will never forget her, and is ultimately content with the life he has now (My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again)
The lyrics here are outstanding and I don't know if anyone could sing them as well as Jeff Tweedy. A sorrowful song about the beauty of the beginning of a past relationship. "my history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain / Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again" Who hasn't been there before... Just a wonderful, wonderful song
A heartbreaking tune about a lost love. Maybe she left, maybe died, who knows... "Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed / I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head"
But life goes on... "My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain / Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again"
I agree that Tweedy's voice fits this song so well. This is such a beutiful song...I think she died by the way.
This song is a beauty, for sure, and it was written by Arlo Guthrie back many years ago.
If you read the lines carefully enough, you will se it is actually the story of a man's life, as it relates to the love of his life.
The song deals with his thoughts and reflections as he approaches his own death, I believe, and takes great comfort in knowing he is going to be reunited with his family, who he loved dearly.
At the end of his life, it all makes sense - why we do the things we do, and what matters most in the end, are the visceral memories of passion...
The way this song is done, the simplicity of the arrangement, the vocals, are just outstanding, because they let the lyrics live.
And life begins again.
analyze*
This is by far my favorite song, I see at a clear portrait of life, just the purest aspect of what should have been impertant in life during it;s duration. The girl in the song doesn't have to be a singular form but i see her as a collective personification of the mans youth . It may be recalling one instance , but it is really just relishing in thime lost in general. YOu have to remeber that this song was written by a man who had used his art to change the minds of generations and to educate the moral majority. and by the time he finally wrote this, a song which truly laments for the honor of the interaction between two beautiful, naive, children, He was unable to put it to music, let alone, perform it. becasuse he was crippled by Huntingtons disease. God Bless this mans broken heart.
It's simple...the singer is recalling first love and intimacy in the simplicty of pure nature. Later, life gets complicated, but it all boils down to love/sex between a man and a woman, which leads to procreation. This is what everything else is for (jobs/wars, etc). He is now a grown and experienced man with a wife and child. This is very much related to his first love...he is sowing his seed again. This song is about life, love, nostalgia, that sort of thing.