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