He was starved by the frost on the winter moss
Bled on the porch till the boards turned red
Nailed like a crow to a cypress cross
But the devil couldn’t keep that boy in the dead
“Born in a crossfire hurricane”
So he rose with the fog in the creeping dawn
The cicadas fell silent inside the brush
With the scent of the mud and the copper gone
As the pine woods held a collective hush
“Raised by a toothless, bearded hag”
He walked through the briars where the copperheads sleep
The soil gave him back but it kept his name
With a shadow too long and a promise to keep
And his eyes burned bright like a swamp-gas flame
“Fell down to my feet and I saw they bled”
Now the floorboards will creak where his footsteps fall
You can bury a secret deep down in the clay
And the moss will grow thick on the parlor wall
But the bayou returns what you throw away
“But it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas”
