Can You Carry Home in a Jar

Lyrics

[Intro]
Scott Island. A volcanic tooth in the Southern Ocean.
Discovered 1902.
Last confirmed landing, 2014.
And then, me.
And then, this.

[Verse 1]
Five glass jars, tucked in a rock cleft.
Lined up like a promise.
Not sand, but black soil.
Not sea, but meltwater, dark with peat.
Your label, in careful script: Desert Dan.
A joke for a man from the tundra, I guess.
From Kautokeino, where the wind carries the smell of reindeer and frozen lingonberry.
Here, the wind just carries the cold.

[Chorus]
Did you think this rock needed a soul?
Did you sail to the loneliest place on the map
to give it a heart?
This dirt from a sieidi stone, this water from a sacred spring.
Can you carry home in a jar?
And if you leave it here… what are you then?

[Verse 2]
I see you kneeling. Late March.
The cold biting your hands.
Scraping the earth from the base of a power stone.
Pouring the water that remembers everything.
Sealing the lids tight against the long sea journey.
Leaving the herd, the siida, the familiar ice.
Did you tell anyone where you were going?
Or did you just vanish south, pulled by an opposite pole?

[Chorus]
Did you think this rock needed a soul?
Did you sail to the end of the world
to give it a memory?
This dirt from a bāiki site, this water from a hidden well.
Can you carry home in a jar?
And if you leave it here… what are you then?

[Bridge]
This island has no rats, no cats. No life that didn't fly here.
Just salt spray and guano.
Fifty-four meters high.
A place defined by everything it is not.
And you brought it the one thing it couldn't make:
home.
A ghost of a place. A transplanted root.

[Outro]
Dan. Desert Dan.
What were you trying to anchor?
Or what were you trying to set free?
Can you carry home?
Can you… carry… home?