Greg Brown Oh You
With your measured abandon and your farmer's walk
With your "let's go" smile and your bawdy talk
With your mother's burden and your father's stare
With your pretty dresses and your ragged underwear
Oh you
With your heart-shaped rocks and your rocky heart
With your worn-out shoes and your eagerness to start
With your sudden lust on an old dirt path
With your candle-lit prayers and your lonely bath
Oh you
Now you stand at the station and you look at the sky
And the train rolled in and it went on by
You had packed up your suitcase, you had saved up the
fare
And you don't know why, but you're still standing there
With your pledge of allegiance and your ringless hand
With your young woman's terror and your old woman's
plan
With your sister's questions and your brother's tears
With your empty womb and the forsaken years
Oh you
With your barroom poems and your Sinatra songs
With your twenty notebooks each five pages long
With your secret hideout made of leaves and mud
With your pocket knife and your roaring blood
Oh you
Well, your children look at you and wonder
'Bout this woman made up of lightning bugs and thunder
And they take in what you can't help but show
With your name that is half yes, half no
With your jealous eye and your wish to do right
With your hungry arms and your sleepless nights
With your joy in the circle and your stories to tell
You walk around jangling the keys to your cell
Oh you
Now it looks like rain and it's all gone gray
And in a while there'll be another sunlit day
And you won't remember the half open door
Or the train that won't even stop there any more
For you
