The Cold Acre

There's a place I've been told

And when I grow old I may go there

I've been told that my family's bones

May lie under the snow there

With my little bag, with my little dog

Who sleeps on my chest

When he can't find a hole in a log

When I go, my dog will know

To leave his old fellow and find a new pillow

Far from the chill of the cold acre

Now there's a Hillydale here and a Lilydale there

Where there's joy in the living, voices that ring in the air

I'd stay there but sooner or later I'd have to go

Where I don't know but when a dog knows it's on him

He doesn't ask why he just goes, when I go my bones will know

To pick up and follow the wagon that rolls on the cold acre

My heart is a cold acre and my chest is a cold acre

I don't grow any good anymore though I've seeded my soul

With all kinds of love, that it aches so

Though I wake from them mouthing

They leave me not able to talk

All these dreams are not nightmares

But realms I've been choosing to walk

With my little bag, with my little dog

Who rests on my stomach and barks at the oncoming fog

O but when I go with my lot in tow

Like a vampire carry my piece in the earth

To the place of my death to the plots of my birth

My heart is a cold acre, in my chest is a cold acre

I don't grow any good anymore though I've seeded my soul

With all kinds of love that don't grow in a cold acre

Nothing's cold acre in a cold acre

I don't grow any good anymore from the bad

Except there's one that you have, one that you had

O grow, grow, grow, grow, grow

And plant me in the only place I know that's the cold acre