Eyes Of A Painter

Gray-haired and flint-eyed, his sunburned face lined

Grandpa was a man of few words

And he had a way of not wanting to say

Anymore 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