The Poetry of Departure: A Meditation on Lost Friends and Unspent Dreams
Nanci Griffith’s “The Wing and the Wheel” is a crystalline piece of poetic melancholy, a gentle-yet-profound reflection on the inevitable drift of friendship and the passage of time that alters all our youthful trajectories. This quiet masterpiece is the closing track on her acclaimed 1986 album, The Last of the True Believers, released by Philo Records, a pivotal record that established her as a master storyteller in the folk and country-folk genres. As an album cut, “The Wing and the Wheel” did not register on the major US singles charts, but its emotional weight and lyrical depth cemented its place as a cornerstone of Nanci Griffith’s celebrated body of work and a favorite among her devoted following.
The song’s story, as Griffith herself often introduced it in her legendary live performances, was inspired by two of her friends who, in her words, reminded her “in the most glorious way that there’s no need for any human being to ever be complacent.” However, the lyrics tell a story steeped in a wistful sadness—the observation of how life’s forces pull people apart. The central theme of the song is beautifully encapsulated in its opening lines: “The wing and the wheel, they carry things away / Whether it’s me that does the leaving, or the love that flies away.” The wing represents aspiration, freedom, and the flight to new horizons, while the wheel signifies the steady, grinding movement of time and the terrestrial path of life, often leading to conventionality. Both, ultimately, mean separation.
The deeper meaning of the song lies in its mournful look at the ‘dreamers’ of her youth. Griffith remembers the friends with whom she “used to linger beneath street lamps / in the halos and the smoke.” But the wing and the wheel “came to carry them away.” This poignant shift is crystallized in the line: “Now they all live out in the suburbs / where their dreams are in their children at play.” For older readers, this imagery cuts deep. It evokes the feeling of attending a high school reunion, realizing that the bohemian ideals, the fierce artistic ambitions, and the sheer promise of those early years were sacrificed or sublimated into mortgage payments and parental responsibilities. It’s not a judgment, but a lament for the sheer loss of possibility, a realization that growing up often means trading the youthful fire for a comfortable, yet quietly compromised, life.
The song is structurally simple—just Nanci’s clear, distinctive voice and an acoustic arrangement, often featuring the haunting texture of a fiddle or violin. It’s this unadorned honesty that allows the lyrics to land with such gravitas. It’s a beautifully melancholic anthem for anyone who has watched their cohort disperse across the map of adulthood, leaving them to ponder their own path, their own choices. When Griffith sings, “The wing and the wheel are gonna carry us along / And we’ll have memories for company / long after the songs are gone,” she’s offering a profound, compassionate benediction. She’s acknowledging the power of movement and change, but assuring the listener that the heart of those friendships and those dreams—the memories—will outlast even the music itself. It’s a nostalgic nod to our collective past and a quiet acceptance of the journeys that the “wing and the wheel” have charted for all of us.