He had a blue wing tattooed on his shoulder Well it might have been a blue bird I don't know But he gets stone drunk and talked about Alaska The salmon boats and 45 below He said he got that blue wing up in Walla Walla And his cellmate there was Little Willy John And Willy he was once a great blues singer And Wing and Willy wrote ‘em up a song. They said: CHORUS: It's dark in here; can't see the sky But I look at this blue wing and I close my eyes And I fly away beyond these walls Up above the clouds where there ain't no fog On a poor man's dreams. They paroled Blue Wing in August of 1963 He moved North picking apples to the town of Wenatchee Then winter finally caught him in a rundown trailer park On the South side of Seattle where the days grow gray and dark And he drank and he dreamt a vision of when the salmon still ran free And his father’s fathers crossed that wild old Bering Sea And the land belonged to everyone and there were old songs yet to sing Now it's narrowed down to a cheap hotel and a tattooed prison wing CHORUS: It's dark in here; can't see the sky But I look at this blue wing and I close my eyes And I fly away beyond these walls Up above the clouds where there ain't no fog On a poor man's dreams. Well he drank his way to LA; And that's where he died And no one knew his Christian name and there was no one there to cry But I dreamt there was a funeral; A preacher and a cheap pine box And half way through the sermon, Blue wing began to talk. He said: CHORUS: It's dark in here; can't see the sky But I look at this blue wing and I close my eyes And I fly away beyond these walls Up above the clouds where there ain't no fog On a poor man's dreams, hey hey, On a poor man's dreams, hey hey, On a poor man's dreams. [Thanks to John Wu for corrections]