Fairhaven's Ancient Canopy

Lyrics

[Intro]
The air changes here.
Just off the road.
It gets thick with pine and damp earth.
The sun breaks into a thousand pieces.
I'm walking into your breath, Fairhaven Hill.

[Verse 1]
The ground is a soft history of fall.
Last year's oak leaves, the year before that.
A slow conversation of decay and birth.
Down here, under the shield ferns,
a pink lady slipper pushes through the duff.
It doesn't remember the name it was given.
It only knows the slant of May light.
This is a patient, living archive.
Every root a sentence, every stone a full stop.

[Chorus]
Under Fairhaven's ancient canopy,
the light is old, the air is wise.
And the forest floor is tended ground,
writing its story for no one's eyes.
A million quiet lives lived out,
a million seasons turning slow.
The stories that the silence keeps,
are the only ones I need to know.

[Verse 2]
I put my hand on the bark of a white pine.
Rough and deep with fissures.
This skin has felt the seventeenth-century snow.
It has heard the soft step of Nipmuc moccasins.
It watched the first stone walls go up,
a geometry of worry in the woods.
It doesn't judge. It just grows.
Reaching for a light that hasn't changed.

[Chorus]
Under Fairhaven's ancient canopy,
the light is old, the air is wise.
And the forest floor is tended ground,
writing its story for no one's eyes.
A million quiet lives lived out,
a million seasons turning slow.
The stories that the silence keeps,
are the only ones I need to know.

[Bridge]
We measure our lives in headlines and heartbeats.
A frantic, hurried pace.
But you measure yours in inches of girth,
in the slow creep of mycelium,
a hidden network of shared strength.
You teach a different kind of time.
The patience of a seed in darkness.
The grace of a fallen trunk,
nursing moss and new life.

[Outro]
Leaving you is like waking from a deep thought.
The sound of cars returns.
But the quiet clings to my coat.
The smell of the tended ground.
Your ancient canopy.
Still watching.
Still growing.