Classic love story true to his western tx roots. One of my favorites as a story, but I think there are alot of songs that are amazing not even listed on this site. I guess I should figure out how to add them, because I have about 8 REK cd's.
Lying on our backs,
This is your parents' bed,
A good place to be laid
'Cause it's so neatly made.
Staring at the ceiling,
Vein to vein the lines look the same
As the ones that you're seeing,
And then you start speaking:
Tracing your father's footsteps
In your mother's shoes,
Going up and over and across your Latin roots.
Point points back to its origin,
Across the world cogs are clogged with the sand,
Here the air breathes freely
And our tongues work loosely,
Border approaches border,
You're using your hands and smearing your are's.
I'm looking over my shoulder,
Strained resistance to scour the door for you
Father's footsteps or your mother's shoes,
Coming up and over,
Cut across your Latin roots.
It's time to meet you makers
This is your parents' bed,
A good place to be laid
'Cause it's so neatly made.
Staring at the ceiling,
Vein to vein the lines look the same
As the ones that you're seeing,
And then you start speaking:
Tracing your father's footsteps
In your mother's shoes,
Going up and over and across your Latin roots.
Point points back to its origin,
Across the world cogs are clogged with the sand,
Here the air breathes freely
And our tongues work loosely,
Border approaches border,
You're using your hands and smearing your are's.
I'm looking over my shoulder,
Strained resistance to scour the door for you
Father's footsteps or your mother's shoes,
Coming up and over,
Cut across your Latin roots.
It's time to meet you makers
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"Lying on our backs, This is your parents' bed, A good place to be laid 'Cause it's so neatly made."
I take this literally to mean he just had sex with his girlfriend in her parents' bed.
"Staring at the ceiling, Vein to vein the lines look the same As the ones that you're seeing, And then you start speaking:"
I am still taking this literally. They are resting after their recent physical exertion, on the bed, and holding their arms up side-by-side and comparing the structure of the visible veins of her arm with his. She starts speaking--this is pillow talk.
"Tracing your father's footsteps In your mother's shoes, Going up and over and across your Latin roots. Point points back to its origin,
Across the world cogs are clogged with the sand, Here the air breathes freely And our tongues work loosely,"
More pillow talk. She's talking about her family's history. They're realizing that she may have been conceived in this same bed. In the outro, "It's time to meet your maker," follows this line of thought to its logical conclusion--by having sex, especially for the first time, one "meets her maker" in the sense that this is how she was made (conceived). Doing this in her parents' bed makes this realization more salient.
I can only guess that since anyone whose family speaks a Romance language (Spanish, Italian, French) or English has at linguistic roots in Latin and this goes along with the overall theme of the song--origins.
This is what I made of this song when I first heard it in the mid/late nineties and I would be immensely gratified from some validation of this long-held belief of mine. Okay. . . immensely is an overstatement. But, still, I'm interested in your comments.