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Spanish Moss Lyrics
Let go darlin'
I can feel the night wind call
Guess I'd better go
I like you more than half as much
As I love your Spanish moss
Spanish moss hangin' down
Lofty as the southern love we've found
Spanish moss
Keeps on followin' my thoughts around
Georgia pine and Ripple wine
Memories of Savannah summertime
Spanish moss
Wish you knew what I was sayin'
So I'm rollin' north thinkin'
Of the way things might have been
If she and I could have changed it all somehow
Spanish moss hangin' down
Lofty as the sycamore you've found
Spanish moss
Keeps on followin' my thoughts around
Georgia pine and Ripple wine
Kisses mixed with moonshine and red clay
Spanish moss
Wish you knew what I was sayin'
So I'm rollin' north thinkin'
Of the way things might have been
If she and I could have changed it all somehow
Let go darlin'
I can feel the night wind call
The devil take the cost
I like the way your kisses flow and I love your Spanish moss
I can feel the night wind call
Guess I'd better go
I like you more than half as much
As I love your Spanish moss
Spanish moss hangin' down
Lofty as the southern love we've found
Spanish moss
Keeps on followin' my thoughts around
Georgia pine and Ripple wine
Memories of Savannah summertime
Spanish moss
Wish you knew what I was sayin'
Of the way things might have been
If she and I could have changed it all somehow
Lofty as the sycamore you've found
Spanish moss
Keeps on followin' my thoughts around
Georgia pine and Ripple wine
Kisses mixed with moonshine and red clay
Spanish moss
Wish you knew what I was sayin'
Of the way things might have been
If she and I could have changed it all somehow
I can feel the night wind call
The devil take the cost
I like the way your kisses flow and I love your Spanish moss
Song Info
Submitted by
butneveroutgunned On May 27, 2006
More Gordon Lightfoot
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The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
Carefree Highway
Summer Side Of Life
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The more I listen to this one, the more I'm inclined that "Spanish Moss" may be symbolic for a certain anatomical part of the body...
Spanish Moss is about his love of a woman and his fixation on and remembering part of her body that he is still missing. You really need to be a man to understand, as we are such visual creatures. Flashes of still frames in our memory stay with us beyond the space and time of our past lives within our relationships. It's a love song. An ode to God's creation. Read between the lines.
@deemic You don't need to be a man. In fact, you probably need to be a woman to truly appreciate the loveliness of his meaning and how he views it in a beautiful, evocative way. Rather than the usual crude names assigned to it.
@deemic You don't need to be a man. In fact, you probably need to be a woman to truly appreciate the loveliness of his meaning and how he views it in a beautiful, evocative way. Rather than the usual crude names assigned to it.
Gordons inspiration for Spanish Moss is his ex-wife Brita, with whom he remained friends despite a tempestuous divorce. Several years after the divorce he and Brita were talking about, well, Spanish Moss. Both were intrigued by it, having seen it in separate journeys to the south. Lightfoot's songs about Brita often were intertwined with sensual, evocative images of nature. Lavender, the sea, rose petals in a forest of rain. In this case, Spanish Moss is also an allusion to marijuana (he mentions this in a live audio recording of a show he played in Boston Ma 1977) as well as representing the hypnotic effect the female body, specifically Britas, always had on him. He found this part of her in particular, to be alluring, beautiful, natural and worthy of praise. Rather than describing it in crude terminology used by men. In fact, both the pot and her Spanish Moss leave him unable to think about much else. Not to mention she knows exactly how to kiss him in a way that leaves him haunted by the sensuality of how she does it. It's threefold representation, the actual moss they eventually saw in the south on a trip. The pot they smoked along with drinking moonshine and her nakedness. As he drives home back to Canada, he imagines what might have been had their reunion been permanent. And he wishes she knew all of this. He never ever got over her despite other relationships and marriages.
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