Frostbitten Halo (Version 2)

Intro

Harness clicks like a rosary bead against the steel

Three hundred feet above the nave where pigeons kneel

Torch throws sparks like wafers scattered on the wind

Halo's cracked along the seam, I'm here to weld again

Verse

Grandfather set the gold leaf back in fifty-nine

Signed his name in solder where the sun don't shine

Said the church paid pennies but the view was priceless

Fell asleep in the harness once, woke up half sightless

Lost two fingers to the cold before he lost his nerve

Told me pain's a language and the steeple makes you learn

I climbed the scaffold gates at nineteen, rope in hand

Watched the city breathe below me, small as a matchstick band

Every plate I bolt is a promise to a man who's gone

Every scar's a stanza in a hymn he left unsung

Ice forms on my eyelash like a crown I didn't earn

Wind tries to strip the gold but the frost is what I burn

Foreman said don't look down, said the fall's the only sin

I said I've been falling since the day that I climbed in

Torch flame's my only sun this far above the ground

Halo's half repaired, and I ain't coming down

Chorus

Frostbitten halo, still it shines like gold

Higher I climb, the colder that it grows

Scars on my knuckles where the ice took hold

Frostbitten halo's the only crown I know

Verse

Twenty years since grandad's name got buried in the frost

Steeple still stands taller than the debts the diocese lost

They cut the crew from six to two, said budget's running thin

I stayed for the gold, not the check that they never send

Fingers don't bend right no more, wrapped in tape and prayer

Breath turns to smoke rings, hanging in the winter air

Kids in the churchyard point up, ask if I'm afraid

I tell them fear's a rope too, just depends how it's laid

Wife keeps the ledger, marks the days I make it back

Circle for a Sunday, cross for when the wind attacks

I welded through a storm once, visor frosted shut

Kept my hands moving blind, faith is a mu