Little River

                                    Lyrics ©1975 Ruth Moore

                                    Music © 1986 Gordon Bok

           

            Ruth has written the definitive novels of the Maine coast as it was when I was growing up here.  One day she handed me this poem, claiming it wanted a tune.  This young fellow, most likely a lobsterman, is listening to the buoy off Cutler Harbor, but now it is above him, and he has  just figured out that he's drowning.

 

Gordon – 12-string guitar

 

          Little River lighted whistle, cry no more

            Sleepy sound from the breakers calling me back to shore

          Whistle it soft to the silver river

          Whistle it loud to the drumming sea

          Whistle it low to the moon and morning

          Not to me, never to me.

 

          For I'm swinging high in another country, swinging low

          Rolling it easy and the dolphins follow me where I go

 

          Whistle it loud to the flood tide making

          Whistle it soft to the wheeling sun

          Whistle it wild to my girl's heart breaking

          She'll remember; she was the one

 

          Spring comes warm over Little River, storm comes black

          I was headed home when the Indian Giver took me back'

 

          Whistle it high to the graybeard breakers

          Where the secret over the great shoals ran

          Whistle the world that was in my pocket

          When I had pockets, when I was a man

 

          repeat # 1

 

Little River is recorded on the albums Bay of Fundy, Herrings in the Bay, and is also in the songbook Time and the Flying Snow