EXTRA **** Pressing Home

In these days of isolation, Sam has been posting songs to social media -- songs of hope and hanging on -- more or less daily. We thought we'd bring you some of those songs here, as Apple Seed Extras.  Here's what Sam says about today's song:  "This is a song I wrote some years ago, and it’s based on the story of the Prodigal Son. I wrote it, in fact, during an era of my life when I felt like I was coming to myself, and pressing, at last, homeward.  I didn’t perform the song much – sometimes a song takes awhile to find the story it wants to belong to. And then I learned about Bobby, the dog that drove with his humans, Frank and Elizabeth Brazier, from Silverton, Oregon to somewhere in Indiana one summer, and got lost. And the brazier’s sorrowed for him, but eventually had to head home. Six months later, Bobby, worn and tired, showed up in Silverton Oregon, his home, having walked there from Indiana. He almost certainly swam the Mississippi River, and crossed the Continental divide in the middle of winter. It’s a marvelous story, the story of Bobbie the Wonderdog, and even though the song is about humans and not dogs,  it has come to belong to that story in a way that seems right. The song is called Pressing Home." Here are the lyrics: Out beyond the summer, past a sea of falling leaves Out beyond where he can hear his mother as she grieves Out beyond the liars and the gamblers and the thieves There's a guy out there, a-sleeping in his car Once that boy had legs of iron and a heart made out of steel And he told you he was leaving, and he bent you to his will And you held him, and you wept, and begged him not to go until He disappeared beneath the falling of a star And he's been gone, gone through the wind and the sorrow Heaven know each blessed mile has cut him to the bone On, on through today and tomorrow With his coat around his ears, somewhere he's pressing home Pressing home And he's carrying a burden that you figured he deserved Pressing home now, with the wages of whatever god he served In