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The Backstory
This one is a love letter to Downeast. Not the whole coast — just that particular stretch below Beaufort where the land starts losing its argument with the water and eventually gives up entirely. Cape Lookout, Core Banks, Shackleford. The places that don't have a stoplight or a grocery store. The places that still belong to the wind and the tide and, if you're lucky enough to catch them at the right hour, a band of wild ponies moving slow through the sea oats.
When I was a boy I had a hand-drawn picture of Cape Lookout lighthouse tacked to the wall above my bed. My uncle sketched it in pencil on a piece of brown paper bag — the diamond pattern, the lantern room, the way the light sits up high enough that you can see it from miles offshore. I looked at that picture so many nights before I ever saw the real thing that by the time I finally did, it felt less like discovery and more like remembering. That lighthouse had already been living in my chest for years.
My father took me out the first time on an old fiberglass sloop that had no business making that run, but she made it. We came in through the bight at last light, dropped the hook in the protected water just inside the hook of the cape, and I watched that lighthouse start its slow turn above us while the boat rocked easy on the swell. The bight holds you like a cupped hand. The ocean is right there. You can hear it, you can feel it in the hull. But it can't touch you. I've slept in a lot of anchorages and I've never slept sounder than I did that first night under Cape Lookout light.
In the morning the ponies were there on Shackleford. Just a handful of them, dark shapes against the pale sand, moving the way things move when they don't know they're being watched. Those horses have been on that island for four hundred years. Whatever else the world has changed about that stretch of coast, the ponies are still there. I don't know why that matters as much as it does. It just does. Some things you need to know are still true, and a herd of wild horses on a barrier island in the early morning is one of them.
- Echo Thatch (2023 - Beaufort, NC)
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
Pushed off Harkers alone 'bout five,
Salt thick air, and this Carolina sky;
Macon cannons in the rearview tide;
Old red drum thumpin' a rhythm in time.
Salt on my lips and a sunset smile,
Lighthouse winks from about 3 miles.
Down East slow, let the hush roll in,
Core Sound tunes up the wind.
[Chorus]
Sing me that Lookout Lullaby,
Inside the Cape beneath a lantern sky,
Cradled in her light, so right, driftin' to sleep,
On the hook at the Diamond Lady's feet.
[Verse 2]
Beaufort waterfront, idlin' on through,
Past Taylor's Creek where the shrimp boats crew;
Blackbeard's hum in the inlet blue,
His ghost the soul of this sandbar pew.
Soundside beachfire glowin' low,
Sea oats whisper what the oystermen know.
Cast one prayer on a crimson tide,
Hear the lighthouse: "You're safe by my side."
[Chorus]
Sing me that Lookout Lullaby,
Inside the Cape beneath a lantern sky,
Cradled in her light, so right, driftin' to sleep,
On the hook at the Diamond Lady's feet.
[Verse 3]
Anchor set easy in the lee of the Cape,
Her light warm as the day fades away,
Sandy toes in the slackwater sweep,
On a hook… at the Diamond Lady's feet.
[Chorus]
Sing me that Lookout Lullaby,
Inside the Cape beneath a lantern sky,
Cradled in her light, so right, driftin' to sleep,
On the hook at the Diamond Lady's feet.
[Outro]
Halyards tick time, ponies count like sheep.
Diamond Lady, hum me down to sleep.