In these days of isolation, Sam has been posting songs to social media -- songs of hope and hanging on -- more or less daily. We thought we'd bring you some of those songs here, as Apple Seed Extras. 

Here's what Sam says about today's song: 

"This is a song I wrote some years ago, and it’s based on the story of the Prodigal Son. I wrote it, in fact, during an era of my life when I felt like I was coming to myself, and pressing, at last, homeward. 

I didn’t perform the song much – sometimes a song takes awhile to find the story it wants to belong to. And then I learned about Bobby, the dog that drove with his humans, Frank and Elizabeth Brazier, from Silverton, Oregon to somewhere in Indiana one summer, and got lost. And the brazier’s sorrowed for him, but eventually had to head home. Six months later, Bobby, worn and tired, showed up in Silverton Oregon, his home, having walked there from Indiana. He almost certainly swam the Mississippi River, and crossed the Continental divide in the middle of winter. It’s a marvelous story, the story of Bobbie the Wonderdog, and even though the song is about humans and not dogs,  it has come to belong to that story in a way that seems right. The song is called Pressing Home."

Here are the lyrics:

Out beyond the summer, past a sea of falling leaves

Out beyond where he can hear his mother as she grieves

Out beyond the liars and the gamblers and the thieves

There's a guy out there, a-sleeping in his car

Once that boy had legs of iron and a heart made out of steel

And he told you he was leaving, and he bent you to his will

And you held him, and you wept, and begged him not to go until

He disappeared beneath the falling of a star

And he's been gone, gone through the wind and the sorrow

Heaven know each blessed mile has cut him to the bone

On, on through today and tomorrow

With his coat around his ears, somewhere he's pressing home

Pressing home

And he's carrying a burden that you figured he deserved

Pressing home now, with the wages of whatever god he served

In his heart there is a memory that his mind somehow preserved

As the last negotiation in a war

And he's been gone, gone through the wind and the sorrow

Heaven know each blessed mile has cut him to the bone

On, on through today and tomorrow

With his coat around his ears, somewhere he's pressing home

Pressing home

So won't you pray that he'll keep coming, though you don't know how or when

And that the strength that took him out might serve to bring him home again

And know he prays himself, a-searching the horizon for a friend

Though he hardly can remember who you are, who you are

And he's been gone, gone through the wind and the sorrow

Heaven know each blessed mile has cut him to the bone

On, on through today and tomorrow

With his coat around his ears, somewhere he's pressing home

Pressing home

Is there one who will go out to mee the boy who ran

So many miles away, before he turned and breathed

And started back again

Heaven knkows I am

Pressing home

We hope you enjoy the song. Hang in there, and we look forward to our next visit on The Apple Seed.