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Kingfishers Catch Fire

from Flora & Fauna by Michael Dornan Music

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lyrics

I don’t have to know the plan
But speak and I’ll go, again.
Got my suitcase packed, old journal in my hand.

Once, the surface was all I saw,
But there's something on the inside going, going on –
A mystery I couldn't solve myself,
Pouring out of every branch, every cloud, every cell.
A hint from the cargo of a sycamore tree
(with which a sermon from a songbird did agree)
Told me “The difference between
the design and the mere fact of a kiss
Is why life's happening, and you happen as a part of this”.

I was tracing my steps on the Braid river path –
It was an old haunt, maybe fodder for a photograph –
Thinking, “Why should I dream up anything new?”
Then your vocabulary did what I didn't think it would do:
Blue, blue, electric blue
Like a bolt from the heavens it flew
Along came one halcyon, along came two,
Heading upstream (countering my downstream route),
So I ran, trampling undergrowth in my training shoes,
For the fire-catching, kingfishing pair I didn't want to lose,
Sprinting for a sighting till I couldn't anymore, and I knew
That the track untravelled was the one I’d take to look for you.

Catching my breath in the brush and the thorns
And my mind's backtracking to the scents of the summer before:
Of backpacking with nowhere to lay our heads,
Cracking up in Como, so easily led;
Back out in Dachau, the aesthetics of inhumanness
Got overthrown and overgrown by a blazing garden.
Then, grabbing on my vision came these lives so luminous –Dragonflies, drawing little flames from heaven.

Yeah, when you speak to me, you know how I'm wired,
Where I'm at in my growing, and my heart's desire.
But, better than how you make the messages unique,
Is how yearningly, burningly, never-spurningly you want to speak.

Speak and I'll go!
Kingfishers catch fire, and I'll follow.
Send me and I'll run into the great unknown with my laces undone

The unknown isn't so uncharted to you.
All the miles that I covered - I'd like to think that I grew,
Caught in a glimpse of the breadth of the story.
When I run right off the map, you're chilling there, waiting for me.

Speak and I'll go!
Kingfishers catch fire, and I'll follow.
Send me and I'll run into the great unknown with my laces undone

credits

from Flora & Fauna, released August 30, 2021
Violins: Joanna Karselis
Inspired by the poem 'As Kingfishers Catch Fire' by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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Michael Dornan Music England, UK

Singer-songwriter based in Devon, UK

Listen to the FLORA & FAUNA album now. Yeah, right now

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