Gentle on my Mind

Well, it's knowin' that your door is always openAnd your path is free to walkThat makes me tend to leave my sleepin' bag rolled upStashed behind your couch

And it's knowin' I'm not shackled by forgotten words and bondsAnd the ink stains that have dried upon some linesThat keeps you in the back roadsBy the rivers of my memory and keeps you ever gentle on my mind

It's not clingin' to the rocks and ivyPlanted on their columns now that bind meOr somethin' that somebody said 'causeThey thought we fit together walkin'

It's just knowin' that the world will not be cursin' or forgivin'When I walk along some railroad track and findThat you're movin' on the back roadsBy the rivers of my memory and for hours you're just gentle on my mind

Though the wheat fields and the coal mines and the junkyardsAnd the highways come between usAnd some other woman's cryin' to her mother'Cause she turned and I was gone

I still might run in silence tears of joy might stain my faceAnd the summer sun might burn me till I'm blindBut not to where I cannot seeYou walkin' on the back roads by the rivers flowin' gentle on my mind

I dip my cup of soupFrom some gurglin', cracklin' cauldron in some train yardMy beard a roughenin' coal pileAnd a dirty hat pulled low across my face

Through cupped hands 'round a tin canI pretend to hold you to my breast and findThat you're wavin' from the back roadsBy the rivers of my memory ever smilin', ever gentle on my mind