Eyes Of A Painter Lyrics - Gold In California: A Retrospective Of Recordings 1975-1985, Vol. 1 & 2 - Kate Wolf

Gray-haired and flint-eyed, his sunburned face lined 

Grandpa was a man of few words 

He had a way of not wanting to say 

Any more than he thought would be heard 

The long years of living, day-to-day giving 

Had carved out a map on his face 

With little to lose, he'd learned how to choose 

And his choices were easy to trace 

He had the eyes of a painter 

Heart of a maker of songs 

His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain 

Precious and so quickly gone 

From a long line of teachers, white Baptist preachers 

He was born with an Indian will 

His quiet dark eyes, reading the light 

As he rode in the low Osage hills 

His school was the prairie, the sage, the wild berry 

The quail, the wide open sky 

The cottonwood thicket by the slow rolling river 

The Redbud and the hot cattle drive 

He had the eyes of a painter 

Heart of a maker of songs 

His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain 

Precious and so quickly gone 

There were days filled with thinking, nights with the drinking 

For a lost love that raged like a storm 

Oh, but how his eyes smiled, when he'd talk to a child 

The rough hands so gentle and warm 

His strong arms were brown, where the long sleeves 

Rolled down, on his faded blue cotton shirt 

When times got hard, he'd go out in the yard 

And he'd cuss away some of his hurt 

He had the eyes of a painter 

Heart of a maker of songs 

His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain 

Precious and so quickly gone 

Now the garden's grown dusty, hand axe lies rusty 

The door's banging hard in the wind 

Grandpa's store is closed down, like most of the town 

And it won't be open again 

And the big white car, sits out in the yard 

Of the house he built solid and true 

Oh, but I see his eyes, burning tonight 

Like the stars in the sky he once knew 

He had the eyes of a painter 

Heart of a maker of songs 

His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain 

Precious and so quickly gone 

His words fell like rain on the dry desert plain 

Precious and so quickly gone