Remember the Mountain Bed - Guthrie Tweedy Bennett


D                        A               G                              
Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves?
                                               D           A
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds?
    Bm                      G
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves
 Em                    G
Face, breast, hips and thighs
D                          C           Em       G             D
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes

D                        A               G                              
Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
                                               D           A
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled woodbines twine
    Bm                      G
Trees held us in on all four sides
Em                    G
so thick we could not see
D                          C           Em       G             D
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me

D                        A               G                              
Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky
                                               D           A
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie
    Bm                      G
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt
Em                    G
and your knees were in the air
D                          C           Em       G             D
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there

D                        A               G                              
Below us the trees grew clumps of trees raised families of trees, and they
                                               D           A
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away
    Bm                      G
The sun was hot and the sun was bright
Em                    G
down in the valley below
D                          C           Em       G             D
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go

D                        A               G                              
There in the shade and hid from the sun we free'd our minds and learned
                                               D           A
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
    Bm                      G
There on our mountain bed of leaves
Em                    G
we learned life's reason why
D                          C           Em       G             D
People laugh and love and dream, they fight and they hate to die

D                        A               G                              
The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown
                                               D           A
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
    Bm                      G
Your shape and form is dim, but plain
Em                    G
there on our mountain bed
D                          C           Em       G             D
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head

D                        A               G                              
I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams
                                               D           A
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
    Bm                      G
I stand here filled with my emptiness now
Em                    G
and look at city and land
D                          C           Em       G             D
I know why farms and cities are built by hot warm nervous hands

D                        A               G                              
I've crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears
                                               D           A
I've crossed city and valley, desert and stream to bring my body here
    Bm                      G
My history and future blaze bright in me
Em                    G
and all my joy and pain
D                          C           Em       G             D
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again

D                        A               G                              
All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
                                               D           A
My greeds, my joys, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight
    Bm                      G
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled
Em                    G
I walk above all pain
D                          C           Em       G             D
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again...