Lyrics

Harvest Moon Parade

Shhh…
The road is waking
And the wagons know the way

Old men climb the apple ladders
Like they did in sixty-two
Laughing at the crooked branches
Like old farmers always do

Someone drives a pumpkin tractor
Past the barley, slow and proud
Pulling carts of glowing corn
Like a little moving cloud

Lantern flowers fill the baskets
Cider rivers start to run
And a fiddler on a hay bale
Tunes the field to everyone

Nobody calls it magic
Nobody writes it down
It’s just another busy morning
In this old strange town

Harvest moon parade
Harvest moon parade
Lantern wagons rolling
Down the dust and through the shade

Harvest moon parade
Harvest moon parade
Funny how the heart remembers
What the hands once made

If the years run faster
Than your boots can go
Follow that old harvest rhythm
Moving soft and low

Martha hangs her laundry lanterns
Cross the pumpkin rows to dry
Grandma says the wind keeps stories
Better than we do sometimes

Young love used to ride these fence roads
Half past ten in borrowed trucks
Funny how the same old gravel
Still knows where to bring us back

Someone lifts a crate of peaches
Warm as late July used to be
And for one small minute everybody
Looks the age they feel in dreams

You don’t lose the old days
They just change their sound
Sometimes they come walking
Through a harvest town

Harvest moon parade
Harvest moon parade
Lantern wagons rolling
Like memory on a grade

If the world gets louder
Than a porch-light song
Follow that old harvest music
Rolling all night long

An old farmer tipped his hat and said,
“You can’t keep summer’s flame—
But every year the harvest comes
And calls you back by name”

Harvest moon parade
Harvest moon parade
Every heart a little younger
When the fiddles start to play

Mmm… the music stays.