Who's Counting

Rate this song

Click a number to rate

About this song

Fourteen Christmases, or a good hundred, depending on who's counting. A jazz-waltz love song for Sharon, thirty-seven years after an April Fools' wedding.

Lyrics

[Intro]
[solo piano]

[Verse 1]
I sent you a hymn from a lawn full of fellas,
A hundred and eighty of us, singing in G,
You said, "That felt so nineteen seventy-four,
But it's lovely." Then you read a post out to me.

[Verse 2]
"If you're sixty," it said, "you have fourteen more Christmases,
Fourteen you'll really remember, or so,
And the kids, if you see them just once every year,
That's a dozen more times." And you set the phone down slow.

[Pre-Chorus]
So I argued the tables, I told you, "It's twenty-four,"
You said, "Not twenty-four good ones," and that's true,
I said, "Give it three years, they'll stretch it to a hundred,"
You said, "I don't believe it." I said, "I do."

[Chorus]
Who's counting? Well, I am, but only one way,
Thirty-seven years, six months, and twenty-four days,
And twenty-three hours since an April Fools' wedding,
I count back to the hour, and I never count ahead.

[Verse 3]
So give me the fourteen, or give me the forty,
Or give me just three, if that's all there will be,
I'll hang the same lights on the same crooked cedar,
You'll say, "So seventy-four," and it'll be lovely to me.

[Chorus]
Who's counting? Well, I am, but only one way,
Thirty-seven years, six months, and twenty-four days,
And twenty-three hours since an April Fools' wedding,
I count back to the hour, and I never count ahead.

[Bridge - hushed]
And the men on the lawn kept on singing,
"The things of earth will grow strangely dim,"
And the post on your phone and the tables I quoted
Went dim in that light, the way it says in the hymn.

[Final Chorus]
Who's counting? Well, I am, but only one way,
Thirty-seven years, six months, and twenty-four days,
And twenty-three hours since an April Fools' wedding,
I count back to the hour, and the rest I leave to Him.

[Outro]
[piano alone, last phrase]

Comments (0)