Better Days

I thought this song suited this picture

Better Days

Clouds torn to rags in the western sky
Smell of rain upon the breeze
You guide your old car down the gravel road
River shines beyond the trees

Hills nestle close together
Like lovers in their sleep
Outline soft with willows
The valleys dark and deep

There's a young kid with a fishing pole
He's watching painted turtles on a log
There's a smelly knot of restless boys
With a shaggy grinning dog

They call to him and they break his dreams
As he lies there in the shade
He leaps up and grabs his homemade spear
Runs off shouting through the glade

You were that kid long years ago
Before your world was stained
Some heartache and some lonesome years there
Something inside you changed

Too many years slip by too fast
While you're fighting the good fight
Something lurks inside your chest
It's like a clock spring, and it's wound too tight

And there comes a time when maybe money
Is like another way of keeping score
Maybe all this stuff's just so much junk
Who needs it any more?

So you're looking for that quiet place
Where no one locks their doors
No asshole with a cell phone
Is ever going to find you anymore

Could be better days ahead

But these graceful and familiar hills
They're like a lover's face
They're soft and gentled by the years
Far from the noise and race

Your eyes grow soft and faraway
Lines fade from around your mouth
You watch the light slant through the trees
The golden fading south

Could be better days ahead

There's a half-crazed whitetail, he's wild with rut
He's giving hell to some poor tree
Wild turkeys running through the brush
There's a red tail on the breeze

Smell of woodsmoke, pine and river mud
Drift sweetly past your nose
You leave the years behind you
Like a small kid sheds his clothes

So here's a window you can dream beside, boy
Clear stars above your head
There's silence, there's darkness, there's trees outside
Maybe a woodstove by your bed

In that silent darkness
Red firelight like wine
The wind blows through the branches
Lord God can you feel that spring unwind inside of you?

Better days ahead.

Garnet Rogers