Stone Fences

Joe Grant

He feels the weather turn, looks out across the water

It's the second time this week

He swears he saw her in the harbour mouth

Where the morning mist rolls out across the bay



Turns back to his work building walls of stone

Across the green hills so overgrown

Cutting through the tangle of clinging vine and weeds

He builds his fences so straight and clean



Chorus

And the wild flowers grow in the cracks between the stones

No one knows the mind of a man who works alone

Another season gone and the wild birds have returned

But the gorbies never tell the secrets they have learned



They say he got too close to his one and only lover

She came in like a fireship touched his soul with her flaming sails

Then she slipped away on a summer storm



Stone fences stand against the wind stand against the rain steady in the gale

A hundred thousand boulders stand pieced together by his hands like a puzzle



Chorus



The mist has turned to rain, the wild birds take their flight

Out across the bay, the flashing of the light

And the gorbies know that one more soul has measured out it's life



Stone fences span across these hills, the memory of a man and the monuments he built

A hundred thousand boulders stand the measure of a man and the life he lived