Highlands

Well my heart’s in the Highlands, gentle and fair

Honeysuckle blooming in the wildwood air

Bluebelles blazing where the Aberdeen waters flow

Well my heart’s in the Highland

I’m gonna go there when I feel good enough to go

Windows were shakin’ all night in my dreams

Everything was exactly the way that it seems

Woke up this morning and I looked at the same old page

Same ol’ rat race

Life in the same ol’ cage

I don’t want nothing from anyone, ain’t that much to take

Wouldn’t know the difference between a real blonde and a fake

Feel like a prisoner in a world of mystery

I wish someone would come

And push back the clock for me

Well my heart’s in the Highlands wherever I roam

That’s where I’ll be when I get called home

The wind, it whispers to the buckeyed trees in rhyme

Well my heart’s in the Highlands

I can only get there one step at a time

I’m listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound

Someone’s always yelling turn it down

Feel like I’m drifting

Drifting from scene to scene

I’m wondering what in the devil could it all possibly mean?

Insanity is smashing up against my soul

You can say I was on anything but a roll

If I had a conscience, well, I just might blow my top

What would I do with it anyway

Maybe take it to the pawn shop

My heart’s in the Highlands at the break of dawn

By the beautiful lake of the Black Swan

Big white clouds like chariots that swing down low

Well my heart’s in the Highlands

Only place left to go

I’m in Boston town, in some restaurant

I got no idea what I want

Well, maybe I do but I’m just really not sure

Waitress comes over

Nobody in the place but me and her

It must be a holiday, there’s nobody around

She studies me closely as I sit down

She got a pretty face and long white shiny legs

She says, “What’ll it be?”

I say, “I don’t know, you got any soft boiled eggs?”

She looks at me, says, “I’d bring you some

But we’re out of ’m, you picked the wrong time to come”

Then she says, “I know you’re an artist, draw a picture of me!”

I say, “I would if I could, but

I don’t do sketches from memory”

“Well,” she says, “I’m right here in front of you, or haven’t you looked?”

I say, “All right, I know, but I don’t have my drawing book!”

She gives me a napkin, she says, “You can do it on that”

I say, “Yes I could, but

I don’t know where my pencil is at!”

She pulls one out from behind her ear

She says, “All right now, go ahead, draw me, I’m standing right here”

I make a few lines and I show it for her to see

Well she takes the napkin and throws it back

And says, “That don’t look a thing like me!”

I said, “Oh, kind Miss, it most certainly does”

She says, “You must be jokin’.” I say, “I wish I was!”

Then she says, “You don’t read women authors, do you?”

Least that’s what I think I hear her say

“Well,” I say, “how would you know and what would it matter anyway?”

“Well,” she says, “you just don’t seem like you do!”

I said, “You’re way wrong”

She says, “Which ones have you read then?” I say, “I read Erica Jong!”

She goes away for a minute

And I slide up out of my chair

I step outside back to the busy street but nobody’s going anywhere

Well my heart’s in the Highlands with the horses and hounds

Way up in the border country, far from the towns

With the twang of the arrow and a snap of the bow

My heart’s in the Highlands

Can’t see any other way to go

Every day is the same thing out the door

Feel further away then ever before

Some things in life, it gets too late to learn

Well, I’m lost somewhere

I must have made a few bad turns

I see people in the park forgetting their troubles and woes

They’re drinking and dancing, wearing bright-colored clothes

All the young men with their young women looking so good

Well, I’d trade places with any of them

In a minute, if I could

I’m crossing the street to get away from a mangy dog

Talking to myself in a monologue

I think what I need might be a full-length leather coat

Somebody just asked me

If I registered to vote

The sun is beginning to shine on me

But it’s not like the sun that used to be

The party’s over and there’s less and less to say

I got new eyes

Everything looks far away

Well, my heart’s in the Highlands at the break of day

Over the hills and far away

There’s a way to get there and I’ll figure it out somehow

But I’m already there in my mind

And that’s good enough for now