37,000 Feet

You can see every baseball diamond in Iowa

From 37,000 feet

At night they’re all lit up like gems

At the edges of towns so neat

It’s the same in Illinois, Ohio, across the Midwest

Islands of people and dreams

Each town crowns a Corn King

Each crowns a Harvest Queen

The lives they live now and forever

Are deeply engraved in the land

The forests are gone now, the plains will be too

But for now they’re making a stand

On the Fourth of July the night landscape

Explodes with lights far below

And each town becomes a sparkled brooch

Alight with an urgent glow

Joni Mitchell sits in the front cabin

A couple of rows from you

She smiles when you send a note over

And asks you over to talk to her too

You said there were fireworks out the window

She said yes, she had seen them as well

She wrote Amelia after a flight on this route

A story she needed to tell

You asked her about This Flight Tonight

Did she like Nazareth’s cover?

You talked of fly-fishing in Wyoming,

Your heads close together like lovers

The lights of Toronto in the distance

In the dark, descending over the lake

Are both hopeful and depressing

You’re home, but it’s the same place

Ramp, arrivals, a smoke and a cab

And you’re back in your life once again

The hopes and the dreams and the baseball teams

Of the Midwest are remembered in vain

You can see every baseball diamond in Iowa

From 37,000 feet

At night they’re all lit up like gems

At the edges of towns so neat