Eyes of a Painter

Grey-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 Ah but how his eyes smiled when he talked 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 the 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 a big white car sits out in the yard Of the house he built solid and true Ah 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