DESCRIPTION:
Shoreline is from the 2004 album Cohen's Ghost: Songs of Lingering Shades.
Music and lyrics © 2004-2012 Gerry Kissell

LYRICS
We walked down to that place
Past the docks and the railroad tracks
Where sea salt air burns the lips
Among boats with broken backs

Haunted, some would say
Though we never really talk about it
We'll save it for another day

Her flesh and dress once new
With plans to be a young man's bride
From a loving family
She found herself the object of a madman's eye

They say she ran away
Though we all know that's not true
We would save it for another day

She walks that place, they say
For the young sailor that she would wed
But if the fiend couldn't have her now
She'd trade her dowry for his fishing net

He ripped her 'neath the bone white moon
Though no one ever talks about it
We'll save it for another day

Grown, we return to this old place
With the secret we cannot hide
It lies there in the waiting sand
Pushed up by the eastern tide

A child's dream of briny hell
Though we never talked about it
We had saved it for another day

They tell of how they found him
Hanging by a fishing net
Two sets of tracks to the old man's shack
Two going in and none come back

He hangs there 'neath the hov'ring moon
Though no one talks about it
They'll save it for another day