| I wake up in the morning next to you
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| Muted sunshine pouring through
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| And from my bedroom we see so many trees reaching for the sky
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| Italian redwoods and pines and sequoias and oaks so green
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| And like a magnet I’m drawn to you
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| And like an anchor cast into the ocean from a ship, I fall into you
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| I hear my garden calling me
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| The begonias, the English lavenders, the violas, and the lilies,
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| and the California poppies
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| And the morning glories
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| And my herb garden full of parsley, various mints, and rosemary
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| Hey, let’s go take a walk along The Johnny Cash Trail
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| Splash around in the American River, walk across the bridges, and through the
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| central California hills
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| And walk by Folsom Prison
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| I heard Suge Knight did some time in there
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| It made me hurt, when in the documentary, he said, «How could it be me?
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| 'Pac was worth more alive than dead.»
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| And now I’m laying on my couch on my wrap-around porch
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| A distraught friend’s coming over, her and her husband are talking divorce
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| I’ve made the guest room nice for her, fresh pillow cases and clean sheets
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| And I put a blue vase in the window full of morning glories
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| And I’m re-reading Nine Stories as we wait for her, I haven’t read it since my
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| early 20s
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| Oh that’s right, Seymour Glass, Seymour Glass lost his mind, and on this planet
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| he wasn’t meant to last
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| And in the story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, I’d forgotten about how Eloise
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| cried to Mary Jane in the end
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| When she remembered the girl from school making fun of her brown-and-yellow
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| dress
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| And while rereading For Esmé— With Love and Squalor, I thought I’m a little bit
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| like Henry Miller, and a little bit like J.D. Sallinger
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| I’m like Sallinger in that I like my solitude and my privacy, and I’m like
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| Miller in that I can also be gregarious and fairly good socially
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| And like both of them I’m funny and to the point, like both of 'em I can pull
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| at your heartstrings
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| But overall, I’m more like Miller in that I write autobiographically
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| Direct and reckless Sallinger goes for the heart, Miller goes for the solar
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| plexus
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| And I close the book when my friend pulls up the driveway
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| She’s in tears and I show her to her room, she tells me that she’ll be hiding
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| away
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| And Caroline goes to the bedroom, and we kiss goodnight
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| And I tell her and my friend downstairs that I’ll be nearby
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| On the patio, next to a pack of cigarettes, looking up to the stars in the sky
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| The breeze is mild, the euphoric scents of my Island Pines
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| Watering Spanish faces full of succulents and weeds and cacti
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| And a part of me is living, but a part of me feels like it has died
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| All I know is that the atmosphere tonight is all mine
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| Down the stairs is one of my best friends and upstairs is the love of my life
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| Amd I’m out here under the porchlight looking out for both of them
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| Like Atticus Finch on the courthouse steps protecting Tom Robinson
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| The world is at once so painful and uncertain and yet so blind
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| All I know for sure is that the atmosphere tonight is all mine
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| And I’m rereading another story, Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes |