Ireland

Someday I'll sing in Ireland. I've dreamed it for so long
The motherland of balladeers and home to orphan songs
Where someone who loves music can feel like they belong
I'll see those ways before these days are gone

When I was a kid in Cleveland, music got me through
I sang my songs to give me hope, and now it's what I do
Some have called me a troubadour, as if the word was new
A thousand years of history breaking through

From far across the ocean, on that midwestern plain
My ballads and my story songs long for whence they came
It feels like finding family, though I have no Irish name
My heart is here in ways I can't explain

The man who made my old guitar formed it on these shores
From trees that whispered in the wind two hundred years before
There's stories that the forest knows, and places to explore
I'll bring that wood back home to there once more

I'll find the pubs where people sing, I'll listen to the bands
I'll walk those busy city streets, and see it all first hand
Guitar case on the sidewalk where the singers make their stand
I'll sing my songs on their own family land

'Course I know so much has changed. The future's come to stay
Show me life the way it is, not some Paddy's day cliché
I'll offer up my songs to you, and we'll see the way they play
My orphan children may get turned away

But still I'll show them where they're from. It's not just history
I'll speak the words of poets gone: my music's ancestry
We'll hear the voice of Ireland in the wind beside the sea
In waves of music far as I can see
The voice of every poet singing free:
Singing bring your orphan children home - to me