I often heard the voices speaking to the spirits To all those who had died while I lived on I never fully understood the words spoken Or exactly where what I heard was coming from My father grew a garden plowed like a graveyard When he dug and piled the dirt three feet high Seeding and planting seemed to go on forever Before the harvest showed him how to live so he could die Every day and every year you’re around Reaches deep to create your many glories Time stands you up then lays you down While you turn those memories into stories You learn to tell about your hometown I knew my mother daily wove a carpet pattern For the richest factory owner on the Carolina shore She tucked and twisted every thread tight and clean Finished up as the foreman asked for more She never knew the real value of those rugs Except as patterns on her weaving machine But she moved the threads as if that one rug Would someday lie inside a mansion of her dreams Every day and every year you’re around Reaches deep to create your many glories Time stands you up then lays you down While you turn those memories into stories You learn to tell about your hometown My father drank until he drove the car through our fence My mother sang off key in the Second Baptist Choir Mornings were silent listening to DJ Jim From GVM The radio tuned in for over two or three hours Jim played only bluegrass and hard core country Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff My parents sat beside that old time tube radio In their faces I could tell they both had given up Every day and every year you’re around Reaches deep to create your many glories Time stands you up then lays you down While you turn those memories into stories You learn to tell about your hometown I wanted to leave that place a hundred times But I always turned around, came back and stayed I guess I simply feared the end of something hard Would always find a painful way to make me pay The pain is the easy part of the cost of being near Witnessed by the ghosts who will not go away Until one day you courage up and ask them to accept A spot close by as you march in your last parade
