Four-Thirty Flood

[Verse 1]
I say, "Samuel, the tide is at the stair."
He pulls his net, don't seem to have a care.
"Four-thirty," he says, his voice a low hum,
"The water's just visiting. It ain't overcome."

[Chorus]
"Let it taste the cypress, let it kiss the floor.
"This house has drunk the salt a hundred times before.
"It ain't the water, child, that you gotta know,
"It's the mark it leaves behind when it finally go."

[Verse 2]
He points a finger, wrinkled, dark with mud,
At a fiddler crab dancin' in the flood.
"Look there," he says with a rusty, quiet sound,
"That little one just found him higher ground."

[Chorus]
"Let it taste the cypress, let it kiss the floor.
"This house has drunk the salt a hundred times before.
"It ain't the water, child, that you gotta know,
"It's the mark it leaves behind when it finally go."

[Bridge]
And the air smells of oysters and coming rain
And I forget about the student loan, the ache, the strain.
This feels more honest, more real, more true
Than anything they ever taught me to do.

[Chorus]
Let it taste the cypress, let it kiss the floor!
This house has drunk the salt a thousand times before!
It ain't the water, child, that I gotta know,
It's the mark we leave behind when we finally go!

[Outro]
The mark we leave behind...
When we finally go...