Yellow Roses on Her Gown

I was born in San Fransisco when the bay was full of cruisers

Where the west wind smells of fishing boats for fifty miles around

My father wore a crew cut, he was lean and he was handsome

And my mother wore a sash of yellow roses on her gown

They would walk me down from Green Street

Pass cathedrals on the hill sides

And the carillons could fill the hearts of any one in town

I remember how they looked then, when their eyes were always living

When my father loved a girl with yellow roses on her gown

Then we moved to Placid County where the weather was a joker

And I watched my parents laughter turn from amber into ice

But my father never stumbled, he would tell me things would change soon

He would bear and bear the insults of a pair of loaded dice

And my mother stood beside him though her heart was on the hill side

Of a city where a soldier and his lover better die

And at night amid the whisper of the pines and ...

She would cry into the sash of yellow roses on her gown

Now my father's living eastward by the Sacramento river

And he swears to me he's happy with his practice and some land

In the springtime and the summer when the fog is off the valley

I visit him on weekends, his grass is overgrown

Sometimes after dinner, I will gaze away the evening

In the attic at a sash of yellow roses on her gown