Palm of My Hand

Music and Lyrics by Sarah Jane Scouten

Magpie Waltz 2011

If I had a pretty penny, if I had jingling bells all around my waist

If every ring on my finger were made of gold and silver

There'd be a magpie eating from the palm of my hand

And if I had my old true lover by the hand up a mountain looking over the sea

Pulled a flask from my pocket and poured it down his gullet

There'd be a whisky-jack* eating from the palm of my hand

There'd be a whisky-jack eating from the palm of my hand

If I had a tiny baby just as soft as a peach as it slept at my breast

If I gave it all my love expecting back nothing

There'd be mother goose eating from the palm of my hand

If I bat my long dark lashes, put on a blue cotton dress and kick up my heels

Picked up my lonely heart and bring it thumping from the ashes

There'd be a turtle dove eating from the palm of my hand

(Whoa...)

If my name were Dylan Thomas**, if my heart were in heaven when I'm under milkwood

If I said Croeso y Cymru, do you take sugar in your tea, yeah

There'd be a red kite eating from the palm of my hand

And if I walked my way to Canada over an ice bridge stretching from Mongolia

If I went'quiet through the trees with only leather on my feet

There'd be a raven soaring up above my head

(Whoa...)

* a whisky-jack is a little brown bird that lives in the mountains of Vancouver’s North Shore

** In 2007 I spent a year in Wales, studying philosophy and creative writing at Cardiff University. The town of Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, is a couple of hours away by train and is where the poet Dylan Thomas spent the last 15 years of his life. The town is situated in a bay, beneath a wood on the hill, called Milkwood. Under Milkwood, Thomas’ last work, is thought to be based on small-town life in Laugharne. Croeso y cymru (pronounced croy-so ee gumree) means “Welcome to Wales” and is sadly about the extent of my knowledge of the Welsh language, besides a few words and terms of endearment. A red kite is a bird of prey found in Wales, and is referred to in Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales:

“Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills."”