Coles Lane Crossing

Lyrics

[Verse] And I felt pressed and dried like a flower In between the pages of their lives Like a chapter added to a story Neither of them meant to write And there was violence under every word he said He would raise his hand for silence As if to slap at the very air between us And then he'd do much more than that And my mother, she had been a singer In a going nowhere band around our town And my father would wait in the car to pick her up But then he never put her down And I met him at the railway crossing Where the Hume did it's best to miss Coles Lane And he took me as far Mullengandra And then he drove me home again And he was neither handsome nor a thinker But he talked and talked until I had to smile So when he laid his arm across my shoulder I let him leave it there a while So when my school called my mother with a question I had only seen that moment in my mind For I was already on a train to Sydney Leaving all you ghosts behind [Chorus] And time keeps marching on me like a soldier Knee-deep in the mud but pressing on And now I cannot go home until all you ghosts are gone And that might take more time than we have left in all these clocks unwinded Unwinded [Verse] And I had savings from a job last Christmas I got myself a room above The Cooper's Arms And I would watch all the pretty boys on King's Street Hailing down those passing cars By now I couldn't even hope to keep you secret Swollen heavy as the yoke around my neck And when the doctor told me you were holding healthy I knew my mother's own regrets And I met him on way home from the station But I had failed again to join the daily grind And he was lean and seemed hungry for conversation By then I was hungry all the time [Chorus] And time keeps marching on me like a soldier Knee-deep in the mud but pressing on And now I cannot go home until all you ghosts are gone And that might take more time than we have left in all these clocks unwinded Unwinded [Verse] But there's nothing I wouldn't do for you my child You're the only thing I know is truly mine So when he laid his arm around my shoulder I let him leave it there a while [Chorus] And now we cannot go home until all you ghosts are gone No, we cannot go home until all you ghosts are gone Now we cannot go home until all you ghosts are gone And that might take more time than we have left in all these clocks unwinded