The Ice Went Out | lyric sheet and margin notes | Hollow and Pine

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Hollow and Pine

The Ice Went Out

Song two of six

From Long Thaw. Written out loud on Route 15 between Wolcott and Morrisville, April, with the windows down.

i

They say the ice went out on the fourth this year,

a week early, and nobody had money on it.

The lake made a noise like a house settling

and then it was just water again.

Every town on the lake runs a pool on the date the ice goes out. I have entered it eleven years running and I have never once been close.
ii

I drove up with the windows down in April

which is a stupid thing to do in April.

My hands were cold on the wheel the whole way

and I did not roll them up. That was the point.

This verse arrived whole, into a phone on the passenger seat, and I have never had that happen before or since. The demo is that recording with the road noise under it, and I still like it better than the record.
iii

Marian says grief is a season and it passes.

Marian has buried a husband and two brothers

and I am not going to argue with Marian.

But she also says the ice comes back.

Marian is my neighbour. She has read this verse, she has approved it, and she wants it known that the last line is hers and not mine.
iv

So I will take the open water while it's open.

I will put the boat in before it is warm.

I will be cold on purpose and on the record,

and I will call that hope, and mean it.

The take we kept is the third one. The first two were better sung and worse meant, and you can hear which is which if you listen for the last line.

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