It's known that your door is always open and your bed is ready to walk That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch And it's known I'm a jackal, I've forgotten words and lines And the ink stains that I've dried upon some line That keeps you in the back roads by the rivers of my memory Keeps you ever gentle on my mind It's like clinging to the rocks around me, planted on some columns now that binds us Or something that somebody said, because they thought we'd been together walking Just knowing that the world around me could listen or forget When I drifted through the marketplace and found That you're in the back roads by the rivers of my memory And for hours you're just gentle on my mind Though the wheat fields and the plows mines and the junkyards and the highways come between us And some other woman's crying to her mother as she turned and love was gone I still might run in silence, tears of joy might stain my face And the summer sun might burn me till I'm blind But not to where I cannot see you walking on the back roads By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind The shadows creep, the water whips, they make me draw inside myself in silence Frustrated now I sit and watch the endless chase of weeds across the ground I close my eyes and see that you're there to hold me to my breast and mind That you're moving on the back roads by the rivers of my memory Every smiling, every gentle on my mind That you're moving on the back roads by the rivers of my memory Every smiling, every gentle on my mind