Crossing Muddy Waters

Baby's gone and I don't know why

She lit out this morning

Like a rusty shot in a hollow sky

She left me without warning

Sooner than the dogs could bark

Faster than the sun rose

Down to the banks in an old mule car

She took a flatboat 'cross the shallows

Left me in my tears to drown

She left a baby daughter

Now the river is wide and deep and brown

She's crossing muddy waters

Tobacco standing in the fields

Be rotten come November

And a bitter heart will not reveal

A spring that love remembers

When that sweet brown girl of mine

Her black eyes are ravens

We broke the bread and drank the wine

From a jug that she'd been saving

She left me in my tears to drown

She left a baby daughter

Now the river is wide and deep and brown

She's crossing muddy waters

Baby's crying and the daylight's gone

That big oak tree is groaning

In a rush of wind and a river of song

I can hear my true love moaning

Crying for her baby child

And crying for her husband

And crying for that river wild

To take her from her loved ones

Left me in my tears to drown

She left a baby daughter

Now the river is wide and deep and brown

She's crossing muddy waters

Now the river is wide and deep and brown

She's crossing muddy waters