Remember the Mountain Bed

Do you still sing of the mountain bed
We made of limbs and leaves
Do you still sigh there near the sky
Where the holly berry bleeds
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves
Face  breast  hips  and thighs
You smiled when I said
The leaves were just the color of your eyes
Rosin' smells and turpentine smells
From eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed
Where tangled wood vines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides
So thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you
And you saw none in me
Your arm was brown against the ground
Your cheeks part of the sky
Your fingers played with grassy moss
As limber you did lie
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt
And your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots
As you lay thinking there
Below us the trees grew clumps of trees
Raised families of trees  and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind
And flung good seeds away
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down
In the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life
So empty come and go
There in the shade and hid from the sun
We freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here
Our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves
We learned life's reason why
The people laugh and love and dream
They fight  they hate to die
The smell of your hair I know is still there
If most of our leaves are blown
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees
Where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim but plain
There on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest
Where you laughed and laid your head
I learned the reason why man must work
And how to dream big dreams
To conquer time and space
And fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now
And look at city and land
And I know why farms
And cities are built by hot  warm  nervous hands
I crossed many states just to stand here now
My face all hot with tears
I crossed city and valley  desert and stream
To bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me
And all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed
Where I smell your hair again
All this day long  I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds  desires  my cravings  hopes
My dreams inside me fight
My loneliness healed  my emptiness filled
I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child
To scatter my seeds again