It’s all about bodily extremities for Jim’s Song Lyric Sunday challenge this week, so let’s go with fingers and the Grateful Dead’s ‘Crazy Fingers’, one of my favourite songs in the canon.

Robert Hunter’s lyrics are sheer poetry and if you have the time (and inclination) listen to the magic starting from 4:45 in this live performance.

Your rain falls like crazy fingers
Peals of fragile thunder keeping time

Recall the days that still are to come
Some sing blue

Hang your heart on laughing willow
Stray down to the water
Deep Sea of Love

Beneath the sweet calm face of the sea
Swift undertow

Life may be sweeter for this, I don’t know
See how it feels in the end
May Lady Lullaby sing plainly for you
Soft, strong, sweet and true

Cloud hands reaching from a rainbow
Tapping at the window touch your hair

So swift and bright
Strange figures of light
Float in air

Who can stop what must arrive now?
Something new is waiting to be born

Dark as the night
You’re still by my side
Shining side

Gone are the days we stopped to decide
Where we should go
We just ride

Gone are the broken eyes we saw through in dreams
Gone – both dream and lie

Life may be sweeter for this I don’t know
Feels like it might be alright
While Lady Lullaby sings plainly for you
Love still rings true

Midnight on a carousel ride
Reaching for the gold ring down inside

Never could reach
It just slips away but I try

Words by Robert Hunter, music by Jerry Garcia

Song Lyric Sunday 23 February 2020