Cloudland

What are our intentions for this lifetime?

Words by Sarah Pirtle © 2017, Discovery Center Music, BMI, set to the Scottish traditional melody that Robert Burns used in writing “Parcel of Rogues.”

Lyrics

1. Why did you take birth and parachute to earth

when you were there watching from Cloudland?

Tell me what called you back in your skin and bone sack

saying -- now it is time to leave Cloudland.

 

And I think I knew all of you were coming, too.

And we’d meet like an ocean to touch this land.    

We will come down here and join our old friends dear

and we’ll pass along the way it is in Cloudland. 

                              

2. Your face in the rain and your footsteps in the lane                

have convinced me it was right to leave Cloudland.

but then the wars make their din and the sorrow enters in.        

and I ache for the way it is in Cloudland.

 

There are faces we can’t see who feel the same as you and me.       

And the rivers and the mountains sing of Cloudland.                       

I keep hunting for your hand when this feels a barren land,             

and I cannot keep my promises from Cloudland.    

 

3. I walk out in the morn, and those plans that we formed

to rain down the peace from our Cloudland

take me out in the street, tell the people that I meet

we do things so differently in Cloudland.

 

Were they once there, too? Does their memory still come through?

Were we all just recently in Cloudland?

Is there some code to crack? Some soft word to bring us back

and we’ll all keep our promises from Cloudland?

Production: Engineered by Loren Feinstein, Colrain, MA

The Story Behind the Song

A friend’s daughter when she was three said that she remembered when she was in Cloudland before she was born. She said, “And then I threw my skin and bone sack into your stomach.” I began to think about that perspective of Cloudland.