Bright Coin (Vol I Closer)

Lyrics

[Intro]
A little sun.
In the palm of my hand.
A little piece of a star that fell.

[Verse 1]
It started in the river.
The Pactolus, running with electrum.
Before the king, before Croesus, before the name.
Just the glitter in the silt.
Then a hand, a hammer, a die.
A lion’s head pressed into the metal.
Six hundred years before the story we tell ourselves began.
The first one. The first bright coin.

[Chorus]
Bright coin, bright coin.
You catch the light.
You hold the story.
From the bottom of the sea
to the top of the sky.
Bright coin.

[Verse 2]
A woman in the Maldives, knee-deep in the lagoon.
Fishing for cowries.
Laying them out to dry in the sand pits,
until the little life inside is gone
and only the shine is left.
A man on Yap, telling his son
about the Rai stone that sank in the storm.
Still good, he says. Still ours.
Still bright in the mind's eye.

[Chorus]
Bright coin, bright coin.
You catch the light.
You hold the story.
From the bottom of the sea
to the top of the sky.
Bright coin.

[Bridge]
The owl on the drachma saw the Parthenon built.
The doubloon felt the salt of the Caribbean.
The sign on Penny Lane, painted on the brick because the metal one was always taken.
The brass token from the mouse in Atlanta, spent on a game of Skee-Ball, nineteen ninety-one.
Each one...
a little sun.

[Outro]
All of this history.
All of these rivers and oceans and hands.
It ends here.
And begins again.
In a child's bedroom.
The clink of a single dime
dropping into a ceramic pig.
The first one he ever earned.
The last one he'll ever forget.
Bright coin.
Bright coin.