Pete Joshua - I Remember My Father

Song performed by Pete Joshua
music: Peter Joshua
lyrics: John Soul (JJ Soul)


I remember my father as he stood by the gate
,
I was so young then, maybe seven or eight,
I feel the weight of his jacket the spread of his hands
As he’s leaving home for his work in some distant lands


He came to the northlands where the whale fishes blow
Deep in a place where the eskimos go
In the wastes of the icebergs in their skin canoes
Just the sound of the sea and the ice all deep green and blue


They were close to the walrus and watching the seals
As they danced on the ocean riding hard on their heels
When a man with a harpoon made of steel and bone
Threw it deep in a whalefish that sank with the speed of a stone


It took down the man with the harpoon it took down half the crew
Their boat was so icebound there was nothing they could do
So they hauled on the rope still attached to the line
And my father came up, thanks to god, for it wasn’t his time


In the home of the Icelanders the summers are green
All yellow, vermillion and all colours between
He drifted out of the ocean and came to that shore
And the summers that lasted all night till the dark of the fall


And he took to a girl with gold in her hair
She lived by the fjord where the whales take the air
And the song of the deep could be heard on the land
Through the volcanic waters and the shining black sand


When the rain falls like sunbeams it softens the snow
And the moon and the stars shine wherever you go
When the sun meets the ocean the hour grows late
I remember my father standing there looking back from the gate