"The Petals"
by Al Grierson

come with me and be  my love and we'll go  high above the city
to the mountains where the  olden rivers run
and I'll  lay for you a table just as fine as I am able  there
to eat the golden apples  of the sun

and it'll be you and  me, honey, at the dawn of all  creation
watching God set down the needle  in the groove
and we'll both  just sit and gaze into the empty face of  darkness
till we notice something  move
where the necessity of sin  has yet to blossom or begin
though you can  feel the heavy purpose in  the air
as in the beauty of His grace He comes to  look upon your  face
and kiss the petals on the flowers in your  hair

come with  me and be my love, oh lay me down among the lilies
lay  beside me like  an autumn afternoon
lay beside me till I shiver in that place  inside  the river
where you hide the silver apples of the Moon

and  it'll  be you and me, honey, at the fall of Rome
and off in China at the   building of the wall
and with an unknown soldier who was buried with  the  king
for running naked with a message down the hall
to tell them  Pharaoh's  drunken army wasn't even after Moses
they were looking for  the answer  everywhere
to the riddle of the sphinx; it's not where  anybody thinks
it's  in the petals on the flowers in your hair

so  come with me and be my lover  in the shadow of the furnace
where another  holy chamber used to be
and a  chilly wind's still blowing there to keep  the embers
glowing
in the ashes  of some other century

and  it'll be you and me, honey, at the burning of  St. Joan
pulling meaning  from a senseless sacrifice
like a pair of lonely  pilgrims on our way to  find forgiveness
in a place between the fire and the  ice
and the  streets are all embarrassed at the sound of  her
confession
and  there's incense in the smoke that fills the  square
as the smell of holy  flesh from Burgundy to Bangladesh
recalls the  petals on the flowers in  your hair

then come with me and be my love and  we'll go round and  round
the riddle
whether God should be a lady or a  lord
or if a  fate not fully flowered was protecting Mr. Howard
or  rehearsing in the  hands of Robert Ford

and it'll be you and me, honey  there in  Northfield, Minnesota
where the living ended bloodied up in   chains
and as we drag them from the streets we'll be ashamed to  tell
the  dying
that they maybe should have stuck to robbing  trains
and though love  is like a river, you can never really break  it
you can shape it on the anvil  of despair
and is there still a  trace of lead there on the fingers of  the
dead
that pull the petals  from the flowers in your hair

then  come with me and be my love, oh  give me hope and give me
shelter
lay me  down between the lion and  the lamb
see me safely through the slaughter, down  beside the  peaceful
waters there
and love me till I don't know who I   am

and it'll be you and me at the apocalypse, honey
as the world  goes  up in flames
and everybody acts surprised; they got that look  there in  their
eyes
but there's a man been going round just taking  names
and it  looks like Rhett and Scarlet with the burning of  Atlanta
in the background on  some old-time movie screen

or like  Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton all  wrapped up in each
other's  arms
while a movie orchestra plays "The  Internationale" and in  the
background the
Bolsheviks are busy taking the  city and they're  so wrapped up in
each other
they don't even seem to  notice and you  gotta wonder-if that's
what he was
really doing, how John  Reed ever  even wrote "Ten Days That Shook
the World"

and it's a long  way  back to 1917

and there ain't no second coming, ain't no "comes   the
revolution"
just a rainbow sign dissolving the air
time was  but  time shall be no more, there's no more peace and no
more war
and  no more  petals on the flowers in your hair

until there's you and  me, honey, at  another new creation
watching God set down the needle in  the  groove.