Rosemary

(This track is found on the import CD Tried and True, a best-of compilation.)

Sometimes a so-called "shipboard" romance takes place on land, but it still happens during a vacation. In this case, in Spain-- specifically, the town of Grenada.

The speaker is reminiscing about a brief infatuation she had there, and addressing her former crush across the abyss of memory and space. "Do you remember how you walked with me?" she begins, "How the women selling rosemary pressed the branches to your chest/ [and] Promised luck?"

Not with themselves, though! They were offering luck for the two who entered looking like a couple. Rosemary was once used as a wedding bouquet, carried by a bride. Obvious, although the two had "met... just the day before," they were quite simpatico.

For her, the attraction was both physical and immediate: "How I wanted to break in/ To that room beneath your skin." And...? "But all that would have to wait."

The couple next meet up in a garden-- first part of a church, then a private mansion, now a city park-- called "The Carmen of the Martyrs." Many statues of saints and martyrs dot the grounds, and some seem to be depicted in the state in which they were, well, martyred; their "heads and hands were taken." Nevertheless, the garden is considered romantic and weddings are even held there.

Back to the couple... "I had come to meet you," she says, "with a question in my footsteps." There is definitely a way to approach someone so that they know you are about to ask them something...

"I was going up the hillside," she continues, "And the journey just begun." We're pretty sure she doesn't mean her hillside hike. She's really hoping something will come of this.

Well..? Did it?

By way of answer, the speaker shifts to metaphor: "My sister says she never dreams at night/ There are days when I know why." This doesn't sound good, but go on...

"Those possibilities, within her sight, with no way of coming true." Oh, how disappointing! Yes, she realizes, "Some things just don't get through into this world, although they try."

Sigh. Maybe if she had bought the rosemary..?

And now? "All I know of you is in my memory." Wow, it sounds like she never even took his picture, not that she needed to. "All I ask of you," she says, is that he "remember" her, in kind.

She needs to at least feel she made some sort of impression. It's bad enough that nothing happened. It would be worse if he didn't regret that, too.

Next Song: Penitent