Songfacts®:

• This song contains the lyric, "I don't see the summer as it wanes, just the subtle change of light upon your face." Springsteen explained to the Observer Music Monthly January 2009: "It's a line about time and I'm old enough to worry about that a little bit. Not too much but a little bit [laughs]. And at certain moments time is obliterated in the presence of somebody you love; there seems to be a transcendence of time in love. Or I believe that there is. I carry a lot of people with me that aren't here any more. And so love transcends time. The normal markers of the day, the month, the year, as you get older those very fearsome markers... in the presence of love - they lose some of their power.
  But it also deals with the deterioration of your physical body. It drifts away, it's just a part of your life. But beauty remains. It's about two people and you visit that place in each other's face. Not just the past and today, but you visit the tomorrows in that person's face now. And everybody knows what that holds."