Denison Witmer’s new album, American Foursquare, is out on May 8th. Today though, Denison has released another song from that project, “San Francisco.”

“San Francisco” finds Denison dreaming about an escape to the Redwood Forest in Northern California. Says Denison: “The Redwoods are my water level. The scale and timelessness of them helps me better understand my own life’s scale and timeline. I feel simultaneously young and old, naive and full of understanding.”

You can hear the song above, or on your favorite platform here. And if you pre-order at Bandcamp here, you’ll receive an exclusive version of “River of Music.”

Here are the lyrics:

Maybe I should book a flight to San Francisco
Rent a car and drive up through the redwood trees
Where they stand in silence high above my sorrow
There’s a message there for you and one for me

I see the child in myself as I get older
Still feeling every age that I have ever been
And I have joy when the light breaks through the shoulders
Of the Pacific giants swaying in the wind
I have a lifetime swaying in my mind again

I think I’m grieving the death of part of me
I think I’m leaving, won’t you come with me
I think I’m grieving the death of part of me
I think I’m leaving, won’t you come with me

It’s everything I’ve got
It’s not everything I need
It’s ok
I made my bed here, baby
This is where I stay

It’s everything I know
It’s not all that I believe
It’s ok
I made my bed here, baby
This is where I lay

Denison Witmer has released “Catalina Love” which you can hear on digital streaming platforms anywhere, or watch the video above. The album, American Foursquare, is out digitally on May 8th.

We all lose someone or something sometime, and this is why this new song is so important right now. In singing to very specific people about a very specific loss—close friends about the death of their 4-month-old baby—Denison is really singing to and for us all.

“Catalina Love is about coming to terms with things that turn out differently than we had planned,” says Denison. “When I am at a loss for words, I usually retreat into a mental space where I have more questions than answers. It’s a type of grief that leaves me wondering things like, ‘Am I the only one who feels this way? Where do I go from here?’”

This tender, careful, yet resilient song reminds us that we all have a love that is lost to us, we are all trying to let go but we just can’t. Every deep loss both compresses and lengthens the passage of time, God’s hand swings low far too often, and at some point, all of us will have walk up to the cliff of our own Catalina Island to give up our tears and let the ashes fall into the waves below.

Here are the lyrics for the song:

I don’t have another choice
I’m living in the void
When I think about you lately
My head fills up with noise

You left here two months ago
I saw the hand of God swing low
And the garden I had planted
Was covered in the snow

How am I going to let you know that I need your love?
How am I going to let you go Catalina Love?

Everything around went black
I sat up in the flash
Was it just me who heard it?
Is it just me who knows?

There are things I’ll never say
It will always be that way
Forever in your memory
Forever on your face

How am I going to let you know that I need your love?
How am I going to let you go Catalina Love?

I have a special place
A place that’s just my own
My namesake’s ash and bones
Are buried in the waves