[Verse 1] He came up from bean-row country when the farm began to tighten, with a kettle on his shoulder and one recipe by heart. Folks asked him what was cooking. "Time," he said, "and what it proves." Then he settled by the hedgerow where the dew caught every thread. Every evening he walks the webbing like a farmer checks his fence, and the silk behind his footsteps loses some of its pretense. [Chorus] Pinky don't prophesy. (No, he don't!) Pinky don't preach. (Never has!) He leaves the plain truth where your own nose can reach. Follow his trail, neighbor, strand after strand. That ain't a vision-- that's a map of where you stand. And the soup? The soup's for something else. [Verse 2] Neighbors gather downwind with their almanacs and chairs, asking after their tomorrows, reading futures in the air. "What's the winter fixing to bring?" He just points along the fence line: "Tomorrow ain't what's hanging there. But there's silk across your gatepost, strung exactly nose-high, friend. I can't tell you where you're headed. I can show you what you're in." [Chorus] Pinky don't prophesy. (No, he don't!) Pinky don't preach. (Never has!) Follow his trail, neighbor, that's a map of where you stand. And the soup? The soup's for something else. [Verse 3] Now the lady in the parlor leaves him out of every snare. Not from mercy--she can't stomach what he carries through the air. So the one bug who can cross her halls and leave on his own feet spends that freedom marking strands and showing neighbors where she feeds. He don't shake a web to prove it-- he marks the strand already there. Marked one clean line for silk once, laughed, and walked it back by noon. Widow Cricket crossed the gatepost on the trail he'd marked at dawn, sniffed the strands herself come Sunday, and her grandkids smell them now. Once you learn to smell the webbing, you don't need his nose no more. (One cost he don't advertise: a nose like that don't close. He smells silk in the clover. He smells it when he dozes.) [Outro] The folks who've had his supper don't ask what the smell foretells. They find the hidden silk now. They read the thread themselves. And the soup? (And the soup?) Mostly beans. Pepper, salt, and time. Just enough left on the tongue to find the thread before it finds you. Nobody who finishes a bowl still calls a snare a sign.
