This song starts with instruments fading into a collage of sound. Then, a lone acoustic guitar for the first verse. After the first refrain, harp, electric guitar, and bass come in. The second verse is drums and both guitars playing in unison without bass, giving it a more intense feel. Taking out the bass in the verse makes the bit after the refrain more full in a pleasing way. This time the post-refrain part still has a harp but adds in an accordion part that is more prominent.

The third verse has bass adding some extra texture to build on the previous verses. The more steady groove is traded for a bit with stops and starts after “train crushed into one.” After the third refrain, background vocals “ahhhhh” added to the harp and accordion. Then horns come back in with the vocals. 

The horns, background vocals, and accordion drop out. The guitar drops out in the beginning of the last vocal line. Bass drops out in the phrase after the last vocal line. The song and album end on a harp part.

In a sweater poorly knit and an unsuspecting smile   
Little Moses drifts downstream in the Nile   
A fumbling reply, an awkward rigid laugh   
And I’m carried helpless by my floating basket raft   
Your flavor in my mind’s back and forth between   
Sweeter than any wine, as bitter as mustard greens   
And it’s light and dark as honeydew and pumpernickel bread   
The trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead

At this point in the album, the self is gone, and Aaron now likens himself to a baby Moses. From the Bible story, Moses was born during a time when the Pharaoh of Egypt ordered the death of all male Hebrew babies. His mother placed him in a basket and sent him down the Nile, where he was discovered and raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter.

His mind is going back and forth between sweet and bitter, light and dark, bringing back the nondual imagery from earlier in the album, most notably in “The Dryness And The Rain” and “The Sun And The Moon”. 

“The trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead”: I take this to mean that his “self” set a trap for God to catch and possess God. However, God caught his leg instead and took away his “self”, his separateness.

——————-

Go plow some other field, and try and forget my name   
We’ll see what harvest yields, and, supposing I’d do the same   
I planted rows of peas, by the first week of July   
They should have come up to my knees   
But they were maybe ankle high   
Take the fingers from your flute to weave your colored yarns   
And boil down your fruit to preserves in mason jars   
And the books are overdue and the goats are underfed   
The trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead   

This verse can be seen as directed toward a former romantic partner or the divine feminine or both. The points in favor of it being a human woman are, in my opinion: “plow some other field”, “forget my name” and Aaron used to replace the fruit and books lines with: “while I play for passing prostitutes on an out-of-tune guitar / I hear there’s someone new – an extra pillow in your bed” (reference 1, reference 2). The points in favor of the divine feminine are the references to flute, yarns, and fruit, which bring to mind aspect of the divine feminine, such as beauty, art, and abundance.

Regardless of which way you go, they are parting ways. Their lives are separate now so they are working separate fields. “We’ll see what harvest yields” is a challenge, he believe that the fruits of his labors will be superior. However, his crops are relatively boring (peas) and are not growing as well as he’d like. I also take the “books are overdue and the goats are underfed” line to be in reference to his farm. Meanwhile, she’s playing music, weaving, and harvesting fruit for preserves.

“The trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead” – He was certain that the fruits of his labor would be superior but they weren’t. He lost the competition he started.

——————-

You’re a door-without-a-key, a field-without-a-fence   
You made a holy fool of me and I’ve thanked you ever since   
And if she comes circling back we’ll end where we’d begun   
Like two pennies on the train track the train crushed into one   
But if I’m a crown without a king, if I’m a broken open seed   
If I come without a thing, then I come with all I need   
No boat out in the blue, no place to rest your head   
The trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead

In this verse, we’re back to addressing God, the door-without-a-key and field-without-a-fence. These two statements are paradoxical when used together, as are a lot of statements about God. If you’re facing a door without a key, you can’t get in.If you’re facing a field without a fence,  there is no boundary at all. A relevant story:

The eighth-century sage Salih of Qaswin said to his students, “Keep knocking on the door of Allah and never stop, for by His mercy, Allah will eventually open His door for those who sincerely seek Him.” The mystic Rabia Al-Adawiyya overheard this statement as she was walking by the mosque and said, “Oh Salih, who said Allah’s door is closed to begin with?”

Anyway, God showed him how foolish he had been in his separateness. Instead of being embarrassed, he’s thankful for it. 

Then he adds in two lines about the divine feminine returning to his life. If this were to happen, he would experience inner unity/wholeness like a circle is one (“two pennies… crushed into one”) and whole (“end where we begun”). “End where we begun is a reference to John Donne’s A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning:

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,   
Like the other foot, obliquely run;   
Thy firmness makes my circle just,   
And makes me end where I begun.   

The last lines are references to coming to God with nothing. If he’s completely worthless like a broken seed or crown with no king and he comes to God with nothing, he comes with all God requires.

God is always moving and changing. “No boat out in the blue” is a reference to Jesus walking on the water, as described in Matthew 14, Mark 6, and John 6. “No place to rest your head” is from Luke 9:58 and Matthew 8:20: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”

——————-

I do not exist, I do not exist, I do not exist   
I do not exist, I do not exist, I do not exist   
I do not exist, I do not exist, I do not exist   
I do not exist, only You exist, I do not exist

At the end, there is no more “I”. And in contrast to the first line of the album, this is not something he’s falsely insisting on. Instead, it’s just the way it is now.