Unwed Fathers

“Leavin' like a father Running like water”

Community readers set "leavin' like a father, running like water" beside John Prine's Unwed Fathers, where the men who leave "can't be bothered, they run like water through a mountain stream". The figure is the same: the man who leaves rendered as water that will not be held. Aaron Dessner, who wrote the music he sent Taylor for cardigan, is a stated Prine admirer, giving the echo a plausible line of inheritance.