Home from the forest

is a song that I find quite moving, but it is composed and sung with Gordon Lightfoot's unmistakable, deceptive lightness. It is about, let's put it bluntly, a tramp who strays into the big city and freezes to death there on a bitterly cold night. But for Gordon Lightfoot, it's not just someone from the ‘bum’ category, someone you don't have to look at twice. He sees the human being, the person, the former, long-forgotten soldier, the man who once had a different life, who loved and was loved. And this comes back in a vision just before he dies. Very touching, I think.

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