royholdren

    The Story:
    My oldest brother Bill was in the last battles of his fight with cancer. My mother was living at the VA hospital with him and I was driving to South Dakota as often as I could to spend quality time with both of them. Mom had been reading a pamphlet on losing a loved one and we talked about it in the stairwell of the hospital before I left. It said that for every ship that sails away with someone saying, “He’s leaving” there is someone on another shore saying, “He’s on his way”. The song idea fermented and wrote itself on the 250 mile drive home. I kept the simple recording I made and played at Bill’s funeral intact as a time capsule.

    The immigrant waits by the harbor
    All he owns clutched in his hands
    He’s going to sail away to where streets are paved in gold
    His eyes reflect fear and excitement
    Should he leave his fertile land
    And all he’s known to get riches yet untold

    Sail on sail on some cry he’s leaving
    Sail on sail on some cry he’ll soon be here

    A ship is waiting in the harbor
    With a solid wooden frame
    And sails so white they say it blinds the eye
    The captain knows all of the oceans
    So well he calls each wave by name
    And he knows the course past storms to sunny skies

    (CHORUS)

    At a far and distant harbor
    Someone is waiting on the shore
    They know without fail the ship will sail this tide
    They are scanning the horizon
    They’ll be together soon once more
    He will disembark to arms thrown open wide

    (CHORUS)