Smoke for crows

I lit a fire by the river bend

Watched the smoke rise like an old lament

Ashes drifting where the wild geese go

Through the bare-bone sky and the early snow

There’s a saddle on a fencepost near

With dirt from a dozen dead frontier years

I swear the wind still speaks in code

Of stories no one’s ever told

And I’ve been waitin’ on a quiet sound

Something more than what this world allows

Where the trees all lean like old tired men

And time don’t start and don’t quite end

The time Send my name on a telegraph wire

If it ever meant more than a flicker of fire

I’ve got smoke for the crows

And nowhere to go

There’s a lantern lit in a windowpane

Of a cabin swallowed up by grain

I carved a song in a cottonwood

But the rain took the words like I knew it would

There’s a silence in the middle of things

Like a bell that broke before it could ring

And the stars—they don’t talk much now

Just hang like nails in a weathered vow

I’ve been searchin’ for a different sound

Underneath all this hallowed ground

Where the field mice build their little thrones

And no one ever comes back home

Tell the wind I won’t follow it blind

I’m just hummin’ along with my free time

With smoke for the crows

And nowhere to go

Maybe I was made for a dusk like this

For faded maps and calloused fists

For a voice that barely stirs the pine

And a song that don’t resolve in time

So I’ve been sittin’ in the amber light

Where the wolves sing wrong and the hours bite

If you ever hear this on the breeze

It’s just me talkin’ to the autumn leaves

I’ve got smoke for the crows

And nothing to show