Borderline

There's a bird somewhere above my driveway In a spruce that escaped my saw And he sings in key when I play in E But I haven't played too much so far Cause I'm building my house this summer From the ground up to the peak With a radiant floor and a glass French door Facing Bald Mountain to the east Each day I work in the shade of the maples Where the air smells like a childhood lost And I'm gonna get it built without a leak, without a tilt And we'll move in by the frost This morning I woke up above the clouds Till the sun roused them from their beds In the chilly valleys, where the rivers breathe into the air As they churn the jagged rocks to death I see my friends less as I age And I feel that middle-age loneliness lurk One's in Vietnam, one's in Kentucky, one's in Colorado, and I'm Up in Vermont, trying to make it work I guess we're all trying to make it work Why couldn't I, why couldn't I Have moved above the 45 instead of wishing that I could Why couldn't I, why couldn't I Be happy in the sunshine? I crave the snow, I crave the woods I crave the rocks, I crave the streams And the cedar bridge that crosses from the street Each day outside with nail guns and compressors With drills and miter saws that scream an awful tune And my back has started pinching, and my hands hurt when I clench them And holy shit, it's only June But when I ache, I think of Keith Richards I think of Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Elvis And if their bodies got them through the sixties Then my body can get me through this It's twenty miles to the borderline Then Montréal, Québec, and hinterland Then that wild north frontier, where I long to disappear For reasons I'll never understand But there I go, being dramatic Talking death when I'm 31 this spring I guess I'm at my best when I've got someone to impress But oh man, that gets so tiring Oh man, it gets so tiring