They live for their love of the days in the sun,
And then in the dark of the short summer nights.
They shimmer and glow until each day is done.
Ignore the sad lows and highlight delights.

The streets of a small rural town are so quiet,
But Dave is kept busy till each long day ends.
Drinking and looking at Jill in moonlight
Perform with the girlband she formed with her friends.

One of the band always struggles and strives
To win in a staring match with a stray cat.
In terms of careers and their long future lives
They've little desire to be this or be that.

They only aspire to be whispering words
And laughing and running and drinking and falling,
To run with the dogs or be off with the birds.
A man with the chance of a lifetime comes calling.

A manager offers to manage the band.
It's more than just fun with the promise of fame.
He tells them he's great at creating a brand.
Millions of people will know them by name.

A chance to be famous provided a mission.
They practised in sheds or in halls or on hills.
They'd outshine the town's most famous musician,
A drummer who set things on fire for the thrills.

A walk in the woods to talk to the birds,
And listen to them -- they have all the news.
Bare facts from their beaks in their song-lyric words.
Stories untainted by rose-tinted hues.

They line up in rows on telephone wires
And listen to calls, faint fuzzy voices.
They hear all the stories of cheaters and liars,
Of someone's closed eyes and of ill-advised choices.

They feel it's their duty to make Dave aware
Of a story they heard that could leave him alone.
Jill's with their manager. Her feeling's are clear.
It's love and he bought her a gold-plated phone.

One day it's August, and then it's late October.
With Christmas encroaching, approaching next year.
The distant summer days seem like skittles now knocked over.
He stands alone, surrounded by the four bare walls of here.

It's all a hazy memory, banished to the past.
Slow motion in the heather in the summer's scented ether.
Days without a notion that all this will never last.
The future held long summer days of going out to meet her.

Soon the clocks go back, a slow descent to winter.
We're deep in Mother Nature's haute couture on heather dales,
And leaves that fall in Autumn sales. Someday soon we'll enter
A time to hibernate in holes we've dug in search of grails.

She's floating away to a shiny new place.
He's stuck in his job in a pub in this town.
The further she floats away from her base,
The more he feels stuck, the more he looks down.

Electric-lit evenings and flickering lights.
There's nothing to light up the room in his mind.
No place to plug in his head on long nights.
In the pub at least some diversion he'll find.

Watching the customers racing their rats.
They all blame the drug tests for racings' delay.
The gangsta rap kids hide their youth beneath hats,
And hide from the fact that their not in LA.

Watching the rats hating their owners.
The schemers observe with their devious grin.
In dimly-lit corners the dreamers and loners
Imagine the day when they finally win.

He'd rather be blind to the bland days ahead,
Or have the real world delayed for a while,
Deluding himself with day-dreaming instead,
Like the sad loners who live in denial.

But then she returns. The band are no more.
The previous months are a brightly-lit blur.
She's lost the sparkling smile she once wore.
She tells him about all that happened to her,

Living in the clouds high above the land below,
Unable to delineate the line between the real
And the make-believe of life in the sky where a crow
Plays the role of a peacock with a great recording deal.

They all returned to earth, a sudden painful fall.
Their manager's attentions were diverted to a singer
Who only eats on weekends and she thinks her name is Paul.
She enjoys hallucinations that the lack of food can bring her.

He's sorry for her but he's glad that she's back.
He's still feeling stuck in a world that's too small.
But the place doesn't look quite as bleak or as black.
With her the day's engine won't struggle and stall.

He's glad to have someone around as he walks
The lonely by-roads on the cold afternoons.
It's not that important if neither one talks.
They listen to birds, who sing their sad tunes.

And bring to the world their stories of woe,
Tales of sad failures that all end in tears.
People who pointlessly fight with a foe.
They add year-by-year to their own store of fears.

Cheating hearts and lying heads
Meeting airborne frying pans.
Mating time in marriage beds
With strangers, or in Transit vans.

These songs seem more alive and real
Than summer songs they used to sing.
Safe and re-assured, they feel.
These tales of hurt and hardship bring

A certain warmth, a little flame
That lights their heads as day departs.
A song of shattered dreams of fame
Will speak of life and warm some hearts.