This Much Counts as One · Track 17 · middle
Furlong
Furlong — 1/8 mile — a furrow-long, the plow's run before turning. Volume: II. LABOR. ANGLE: The length a team could pull before resting. The distance between one turn and the next, for a lifetime. Sing the person or animal inside the unit, never the definition.
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Lyrics
[Intro] [Verse 1] The sun comes up a dull copper coin, The share bites down in the morning chill. I don't need a map to tell me the edge, My shoulders know where the dragging will stall. It's in the pull, the weight of the iron, Two massive heads nodding down to the dirt. We don't stop for the shout of a man, We stop when the breathing begins to hurt. [Chorus] Hold the line, wait for the edge. Wait for the moment the big muscles stretch. That’s how you measure a piece of the earth, By exactly how much a lungful is worth. Then you haul the rig around. And cut a new scar in the ground. [Verse 2] There's a crust of dried foam on the heavy trace, Right where the collar digs into the skin. Some clerk in the city with compass and chain, Thinks a grid is the way that the measuring ends. But a line isn't drawn by a man in a room, It’s carved by the limit of bone and of meat. My forearms go slack just before we arrive, I know the stop coming right through my boots. [Chorus] Hold the line, wait for the edge. Wait for the moment the big muscles stretch. That’s how you measure a piece of the earth, By exactly how much a lungful is worth. Then you haul the rig around. And cut a new scar in the ground. [Bridge] Now they sell it by numbers, they draw it in ink, They trade our exhaustion for lines on a page. But the shape of this county was built in the blood, In the heave of the chest and the animal's weight. We wrote the ruler with nothing but time, Walking the length of a desperate straight line. [Chorus] Hold the line, wait for the edge. Wait for the moment the big muscles stretch. That’s how you measure a piece of the earth, By exactly how much a lungful is worth. Then you haul the rig around... Just to walk back across the exact same ground. [Outro] One more run. The dirt turning over in the failing sun. Until the breathing stops. Until the long day drops.