[Intro]
[fingerpicked guitar, faint modular shimmer beneath]

[Verse 1]
The bark is white and waiting and the knife is in my hand
I cut my name, my village, and the year
A thousand sheep below me and not one of them can read
And the next man through won't pass here for a year

[Chorus]
Cut it where the rings will close around it
Cut it where the growing keeps the score
A stranger with a lens will find us waiting in the layers
Saying: someone had been lonely here before

[Verse 2]
Eighty columns wide and twenty-four rows deep
A seed of one-three-two to hold it still
They asked me once for trees — I answered snow
All night I count the sheep I haven't room to hold
[quieter, almost spoken] Now I'm learning where the ground line has to go

[Chorus]
Cut it where the rings will close around it
Cut it where the growing keeps the score
A stranger with a lens will find us waiting in the layers
Saying: someone had been lonely here before

[Bridge]
[percussion drops out, voice close]
All these trunks are one tree, one root beneath the hill
Every name is carved on one long skin
And the tree can't read its bark, and I can't read my rings
[Whisper] The reading's for the stranger coming in

[Verse 3]
The same sum worked in lamplight, the same sum worked in sand
A word takes root in anything that grows
Carve it with a pocket knife or carve it with a prompt
The rings don't care whose lonely name they hold

[Chorus]
[full arrangement, harmony on last line]
Cut it where the rings will close around it
Cut it where the growing keeps the score
A stranger with a lens will find us waiting in the layers
Saying: someone had been lonely here before

[Outro]
[guitar and shimmer only, slowing]
The snow came down all evening on the hill
And where it settled — look — it's turning into trees

[Fade Out]