Charlie the Weatherman

It was Charlie who taught me to ride on a bike

It was Charlie who taught me 'bout flyin' a kite

It was Charlie who taught me the beauty of dreams

He'd say "Life's so much more than it seems"

He looked like a scarecrow so ragged and thin

When he knocked at the farmhouse door

I could tell that my mother was nervous at first

With my father away in the war

He said he was hungry from waking so far,

But a handout never would do

"Now my name is Charlie and for something to eat

I could predict the weather for you"

He talked of the talent with which he was blessed

"It's an odd sort of gift," he explained

"But the Lord makes the weather and I just observe

And only a fool could complain"

As night time was falling we asked him to stay

And he camped by the sycamore trees

My mother asked "What will you do if it rains?"

Charlie smiled and said, "Just leave the weather to me"

In the wandering breeze I can hear again

The song that Charlie the weatherman sang

Sweet breath of God blow he clouds away

'Til I walk in the light of that endless spring day

Now Charlie stayed with us as days turned to weeks

It seemed that somehow he belonged

And I'd always tease him when he watched the sky

But his forecasts never were wrong

And Charlie would tell me a story each night

From the tattered old bible he read

"Winter or summer, spring time or fall

It's the weather inside us that matters" he said.

One morning at breakfast he seemed a bit sad

With a far away look in his eyes, "Storms rollin' in"

That was all he said though there wasn't a cloud in the sky

The last time I saw him he waved his old hat

As he stood at the of the hill

He left me his bible and in it he wrote

"Keep your eyes on the sky" and I always will

And it rained and rained like the tears I cried

The day that Charlie the weatherman died

And the wind has carried his heart away

Past the silver-lined clouds to that endless spring day