It must have been a holiday or something
It was flat enough to see the storm a town away
It was the snap of cold that felled the yellow ginkgo leaves
A ball of fire in the atmosphere

Ball of fire, you are no son of mine
The time to go is gone or gone or gone or gone
Now you be sure I hear no peep of yours
Lest you come home a ball of fire

I’ve heard it said that there’s two kinds of scorn
But it’s hard to tell the time of day
When you knew the thunderstorm you saw was at your back
You might as well have been a basketball

The shiny sorrow of the Mayflower set
Is a bauble for a bowerbird
There is an urgency the moving clouds resent
But it’s before the second story was

And it’s a problem for a human son of man
The baddest harvest of the newborn room
You might miss it from a moving car
But you would feel it watching over you

The second exit through the roundabout’s a rainbow bridge
The time to go is gone or gone or gone or gone
The selfish words we say will follow us around
Like nervous ducklings in a line

It’s either up a hill or down a hill
The mother of all storms was what the forecast said before
The rain was splashing on the overhang
The tolling bell was just to say what time of day it was

And honest doesn’t mean it’s good
The cringing sun might have a word to say
And you could stop your ears with sealing wax
But you might miss the denouement arrive

The willow tree is a peculiar tree to choose
But it doesn’t matter when you’re dead inside
And you could say a ball of twine is standing in for you
But that’s just kicking in an open door

Ball of fire, you are no friend of mine
The time to go is gone or gone or gone or gone
Now you be sure I hear no peep of yours
Lest you come home a ball of fire