Potters Wheel - Josh Ritter

I close my eyes, and it all returns like the spinning of a potter’s wheel

Trying to stay ahead of morning as time came running with us

And she beat us to the finish as we ran through the fields

You were born in the city, and I didn’t recognize you

Your beauty unexpected like a flower in the concrete

Some gods far below in worlds undiscovered

Set you up to ruin temples to find me on the streets, yeah

I’m an alias of who I am a counterfeited fake

In the picture I am kneeling like a dying saint Jerome

Hurling rocks at the demons who tried to come too near

'Till you came in and possessed me now I feel at home

I remember the time I walked for seven hours

And thought about the people I had known for so long

All the castles I had built out of fine and precious sand

'Till you came in like the tide now I don’t care that they are gone

As we floated up the river I translated the verses

That were written on memorials to the ships that had sank

And I thought about the people that traded sinking for uncertainty

And drowned because of loneliness before they reached the banks

On a beach near Barcelona the young girls cry for Mary

And they bury earthen vessels in the rocks by the sea

I am sending out a bottle with a prayer upon the waves

That you’ll find inside my picture, and your memory will unfold me

We were talking about a trip that I had taken to the canyons

And you told me of a river that had cut through time

Leaving only the pictures of long dead sons and daughters

And you told that the paintings looked a lot like mine

I try and watch myself to see what I am saying

But my heart is on my collar, and I’m asking you to take it

I don’t want to go back to the way things were before

Before the dawn turns into morning I want you there to break it

And a thousand years from now when our names are just a memory

And poets have recorded what happened in the past

Lovers loving in the night will find our forms in constellations

Seekers seeking for salvation will find our stories in the stained glass

A boy in the city who has never seen the morning

As he’s running arm in arm with you through the fields

Will be caught unexpected by a flower in the concrete

It will all return again just like a potter’s wheel