Blue Wing

He had a blue wing tattooed on his shoulder Ought might have been a bluebird, I don't know But he'd get stone drunk and talk about Alaska The Salmon boats and 45 below He said he got his blue wing up in Walla-Walla And his cellmate there was a Little Willy John Now Willie, he was once a great blues singer And Blue Wing & Willie wrote him up a song They said, it's dark in here, I can't see the sky But I look at my blue wing and I close my eyes And I fly away, beyond these walls Up above the clouds, where the rain don't fall On a poor man's dreams Well they paroled Blue Wing in August of 1963 And he moved North, picking apples to the town of Wenatchee And when winter finally caught him, he's in a rundown trailer park On the South side of Seattle where the days get grey and dark And he drank and he dreamt a vision of when the Salmon still ran free And his father's fathers crossed that wide old Bering sea And the land belonged to everyone And there were old songs yet to sing Now it's narrowed down to a cheap hotel And a tattooed prison wing He said it's dark in here, I can't see the sky But I looking my blue wing and I close my eyes And I fly away, beyond these walls Up above the clouds, where the rain don't fall On a poor man's dreams Well, he drank his way to L.A., and that's where he died And there was no one to knew his Christian name And there was no one there to cry But dreamed there was a funeral, a preacher and a cheap pine box And halfway through the sermon old blue wing he began to talk He said it's dark in here, I can't see the sky But I look at my blue wing and I close my eyes And I fly away, beyond these walls Up above the clouds, where the rain don't fall On a poor man's dreams On a poor man's dreams On a poor man's dreams