Gentle On My Mind

It's just knowing that your door is always open and your 
path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag rolled up and 
stashed behind your couch
And it's knowing I'm not shacked by forgotten words and 
bons
And the ink stains that have dried upon some line
That keeps you in the back roads by the rivers of my mem'ry
That keeps you ever gentle on my mind
It's not clinging to the rocks and I'd be planted on their 
columns now that binds me
Or something that somebody said because they thought we fit
 together walking
It's just knowing that the world will not be cursing or 
forgivin'
When I walk along some railroad track and find
That you're movin' on the back roads by the rivers of my 
mem'ry
And for hours you're just gentle on my mind
Though the wheet fields and the clothes lines
And the junk yards and the highways come between us
And some other woman cryin' to her mother cause she turned 
and I was gone
I still might run in silence tears of joy might stain my 
face
And the summer sun might burn me till I'm blind
But not to where I cannot see you walking on the back roads
By the rivers flowin' gentle on my mind
I dipped my cup of soap back from a gurgling crackling 
caltron in some train yard
My beard a roughen coal pile and a dirty hat pulled low 
across my face
Through cupped hands round a tin can I pretend I hold you 
to my breast and find
That you're waving from the back roads by the rivers of my 
mem'ry

Ever smiling ever gentle on my mind