Crossing Muddy Waters

 

Baby's gone and I don't know why, she headed out this morning

Tobacco standing in the fields, be rotten come November

Baby's crying and the daylight's gone, that big oak tree is groaning

 

Like a rusty shot in a hollow sky, she left me without warning

And a bitter heart will not reveal, a spring that love remembers

In a rush of wind and a river song, I can hear my true love moaning

 

sooner than the dogs could bark, faster than the sun rose

when that sweet brown girl of mine, hair black as a raven

Crying for her baby child, oh crying for her husband

 

down to the banks in an old mule cart

We broke the bread and drank the wine

Crying for that rivers wild,

 

she took a flat boat 'cross the shallows

from a jug that she'd been saving

to take her from her loved ones

 

Chorus:

Left me in my tears to drown, she left a baby daughter

 

Now the river's wide and deep and brown, she's crossing muddy waters