Frederick MORGAN - rowing with grandpa

Illustration musicale: Kate WOLF - eyes of a painter

Gray-haired and flint-eyed, his sunburned face lined
Grandpa was a man of few words
He had a way of not wanting to say
Any more than he thought would be heard
The long years of living, day-to-day giving
Had carved out a map on his face
With little to lose, he’d learned how to choose
And his choices were easy to trace
He had the eyes of a painter
Heart of a maker of songs
His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain
Precious and so quickly gone
From a long line of teachers, white Baptist preachers
He was born with an Indian will
His quiet dark eyes, reading the light
As he rode in the low Osage hills
His school was the prairie, the sage, the wild berry
The quail, the wide open sky
The cottonwood thicket by the slow rolling river
The Redbud and the hot cattle drive
He had the eyes of a painter
Heart of a maker of songs
His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain
Precious and so quickly gone
There were days filled with thinking, nights with the drinking
For a lost love that raged like a storm
Oh, but how his eyes smiled, when he’d talk to a child
The rough hands so gentle and warm
His strong arms were brown, where the long sleeves
Rolled down, on his faded blue cotton shirt
When times got hard, he’d go out in the yard
And he'd cuss away some of his hurt
He had the eyes of a painter
Heart of a maker of songs
His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain
Precious and so quickly gone
Now the garden’s grown dusty, hand axe lies rusty
The door’s banging hard in the wind
Grandpa’s store is closed down, like most of the town
And it won’t be open again
And the big white car, sits out in the yard
Of the house he built solid and true
Oh, but I see his eyes, burning tonight
Like the stars in the sky he once knew
He had the eyes of a painter
Heart of a maker of songs
His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain
Precious and so quickly gone
His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain
Precious and so quickly gone