This song, while beautiful at any time of the year, is especially resonant at the dawn of a new holiday season. So this morning, as our Thanksgiving gift, here’s The Flood’s latest performance of the late Michael Peter Smith’s evocative “Spoon River.”

Thanksgiving, as a season celebrating the bonds of friends and families, is a particularly good time to appreciate a song that reminds us in the very first verse how “all our lives were entwined to begin with.”

As we noted an earlier in Flood Watch article, Smith once famously commented, “I like songs that delight in giving you a picture,” and “Spoon River” does that in spades, from images of riverboat gamblers and Union soldiers to the calico dresses in the attic along with Grandfather’s derringer case.

Thanksgiving gatherings often involve opening drawers, unlocking old doors and retelling stories to reconnect with ancestors through the objects they pass down.

And more. Our favorite lines, at the end of the second verse —

There are words whispered down in the parlor, a shadowy face. The morning is heavy with one more beginning ….

— evoke the way that memory itself seems to drift through a house during the holidays, the past present with the living.

May this song bring you joy and sweet memories as you come and ride through the morning.

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