Bag Lady

Lyrics

[Intro]
December bus exhaust.
A ghost of steam on the glass of the bus shelter.

[Verse 1]
The sun comes up grey over the avenue.
The park bench is cold iron right through the coat.
Four layers of someone else's wool.
The wheels of the cart are stiff with frost.
One of them always pulls to the left.
Rattles over the sidewalk grates like a train of bones.

[Chorus]
They call her the Bag Lady.
A name for a ghost.
All her money in a brown paper bag.
A fortune of crumpled ones and a photograph faded to white.
Her whole house in a paper sack.
A life folded small enough to hold.

[Verse 2]
The library doors open up at nine.
It's warm in there.
No one bothers you in the history section.
She lays out the coins on a page about Rome.
Counts them twice.
Enough for coffee and a roll.
Her bank is the pocket of a coat inside a coat.
Safer that way.

[Chorus]
And they call her the Bag Lady.
A name for a ghost.
All her money in a brown paper bag.
A fortune of crumpled ones and a photograph faded to white.
Her whole house in a paper sack.
A life folded small enough to hold.

[Bridge]
There was a name before this one.
A kitchen with a yellow curtain.
A key on a hook by the door.
But the doors all closed in the nineteen-eighties.
They opened the hospitals and they closed the doors.
And a name got lost somewhere on the street.
Now it's just a shape the city walks around.

[Outro]
A coffee can, sealed with silver tape.
Inside, a plastic bag.
Inside that, another one.
Inside that, a single dollar bill.
For emergencies.