Mark Shepard: A Life In Song

Posts Tagged ‘Spiritual Songs’

Here’s a video version of “Coming Home” dedicated to Flo @Dancer30815 and other people in need of physical or emotional healing. Please rate and share.

This song is from my Thirsty For The Sky CD

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Comments are appreciate below. you can download the mp3 version free here:
Coming Home Audio Download Thanks! – Mark

Dedicated to the Memory of Jeremiah R. Dineen

Play the song. Download and share it with your friends free!

If you feel so moved to contribute to the Life In Song Project so that I can continue to preserve and share recordings of the close to 400 songs I’ve written over the past 30 years, you can do so with the donate button in the right side bar. Thanks!

The Moon On The River | 9/15/1989 | Song # 138

The moon on the river
Is sapphire, pearl and silver
As it penetrates the windshield of my car

As I drive along the highway
It tags along beside me
And seems to call me upwards to the stars

I’ve passed this way before
And I will again I’m sure
As the same old questions rise to haunt at me…

I walk roads that I’ve been told
Are rough and rocky kinds of roads
But out here on the road,
Despite the stories I’ve been told
I find it straight and smooth
And green with growing grass

Charlie, next door…
Well he lost his wife before
He really had a chance to say goodbye

And the neighbors and the friends
We did our best to comprehend
What it’s like to stay behind when your best friend flies

And the children still will play
Despite those who pass away
And each life that’s left must learn to carry on

We walk roads that we’ve been told
Are rough and rocky kinds of roads
But out there on the road,
Despite the stories we’ve been told
We find it straight and smooth
And green with growing grass

The moon on the river
Is sapphire, pearl and silver
As it penetrates the windshield of my car

As I drive along the highway
It tags along beside me
And seems to call me upwards to the stars

I walk roads that I’ve been told
Are rough and rocky kinds of roads
But out here on the road,
Despite the stories I’ve been told
I find it straight and smooth
And green with growing grass

Commentary: This is one of those songs that truly chose me to write it. I was driving up the Hudson river near Peekskill, NY and the moon was just hypnotically filling the sky and reflected off of the Hudson. I was reflective as well because my elderly next door neighbor Charlie, had just lost his wife. She just passed away suddenly. They’d been together for something like 50 years. We really are just visitors here. Life can change in moments. And then, life went on as it always does. As it will do after each of us takes the path we all must take…

I’m dedicating this song to the memory of my friend Jerry Dineen who passed away recently after a long struggle with cancer. I also grew up with his wife Trish. 30 years have passed in the blink of an eye and every moment is precious.

Tuning: DADGAD

This is the first release of this song.

© 1989-2009 by Mark Shepard http://MarkShepardSongs.come
All commercial rights reserved.
Permission granted to reprint with copyright info and link intact. Permission granted to download and distribute/share the mp3 file for non commercial purposes.

please book mark this, facebook it, twitter it, stumble it, digg it etc. Share this with people who might appreciate hearing from you. thank you.  – Mark Shepard

January 1977, Song #2

Note: Click the play button below to play it here or “Play in Pop up” to open a separate little window

I’d like to welcome you to where you are
Needless to say the door is always ajar
I’d like to tell you where I am today
I’ll say it before it slips away

I’m something else besides that person over there
I’m something else besides the face I wear
I am the empty hallways
Filled with empty sound
I am the lonely seeker
A case of lost, not found

But there amidst the bitterness
There is a word that sings of you
There is a word that sings of me

That word is “we”

We are the ones who gain and lose
We fight the battles, get the blues
We are the stones of all foundations
We are the lost generations

We are appointed by some knowing force
To occupy the chairs held now by ghosts
Others will follow when their time has come

It’s all the same for everyone
We vainly try to gain the source
Wasted is the kindness of the host
While our groping minds soon are numbed
By the sight of what we have become

We’re something else besides “those people over there”
We’re something else besides the labels that we bear

We are the empty churches
Filled with empty prayer
We are our mother’s sons
Choking in despair
We stand alone amidst our burned out lives
And you don’t seem to care
That we once cared.

We are the ones who gain and lose
We fight the battles, get the blues
We are the stones of all foundations
We are the lost generations
And you don’t seem to care that we once cared….

Commentary: This was interestingly enough, my mom’s favorite song! I wrote it in the midst of deep existential teen age angst on a church youth group retreat…I was entering into that healthy doubting phase that I’m still in…There’s a nicely produced version of this on my Hesitant Journey Album which at this moment exists in the form of a single vinyl “long playing record” or “LP” I’m hoping to get it transferred to digital format soon. Glancing over these lyrics…I’m glad I’ve let go of a lot of that angst stuff but it was real and honest at the time.

- Mark

© Mark Shepard 1977-2008. All rights reserved.