The Cold Acre - Augie March

There’s a place I’ve been told, and when I grow old I may go there

I’ve been told that my family’s bones may lie under the snow there

And with my little bag, and with my little dog

Who sleeps on my chest when he can’t find a hole in a log

And when I go, my dog will know to leave his old fellow and find a new pillow,

far from the chill of the cold acre

Now there’s a Hillydale here and a Lilydale there where there’s joy in the

living, in voices that ring in the air

I’d stay there but sooner or later I’d have to go, where I don’t know

But when a dog knows it’s on him he doesn’t ask why he just goes

And when I go my bones will know, to pick up and follow the wagon that rolls on

the cold acre…

My heart is a cold acre, in my chest is a cold acre

I don’t grow any good anymore though I’ve seeded my soul with

All kinds of love, that it aches so…

Though I wake from them mouthing they leave me not able to talk

These dreams are not nightmares but realms I’ve been choosing to walk

With my little bag, and with my little dog

Who rests on my stomach and barks at the oncoming fog

O but when I go, with my lot in tow

Like a vampire carry my piece of the earth to the place of my death from the

plots of my birth…

My heart is a cold acre, in my chest is a cold acre

I know any good anymore from the bad except there’s one that you have and one

that you had

O grow, grow, grow, grow, grow

And plant me in the only place I know

That’s the Cold Acre