Sage After Rain - Darrell Scott

He died with his boots on in another man’s bed

The way he once said it would be

He’s a scoundrel I guess, just got what was due

But he was always a good friend to me

He talked of a girl he’d known long ago

His eyes welled with tears when he’d try to explain

How the sound of her voice

It made him feel whole

And the smell of her skin

Like sage after rain

Like sage after rain

Like sage after rain

I’d go to East Colfax with one of my friends

Back in high school for something to do

And that’s where I met him when he bought us some beer

A six pack if he could have two

He said come back to my place you can drink it there safe

Don’t worry its cool

Then he gave us his name

I paused at a picture and he told me about her and the smell of her skin

Like sage after rain

Like sage after rain

Like sage after rain

I’d go to his house

And we’d talk book for hours

Pacing the floor as he’d quote from his head

There’s an old Royal typewriter a desk by a window

Three novels in boxes under his bed

A drafty old house

His grandfather’d left him he grew up in Boston came west on a train

The snow-covered front range and a lovely young teacher

The smell of her skin

Like sage after rain

Like sage after rain

Like sage after rain

She was killed in the wreck that left him half-broken

He told me about it one time, and that’s all

Some people said it’d have helped if she was driving

He said that made less than no difference at all

He’d talk of her beauty

Her eyes and her fire

He’d smile when he called her «broad with great brains»

But there was always respect

And his memories were tender

And the smell of her skin

Like sage after rain

Like sage after rain

Like sage after rain

They called me about him early one morning

I made the arrangements that sent him to burn

No wife, no children, no next-of-kin there

Like it said in his will they gave me the urn

I drove North to Wyoming in a late April drizzle

A place where we’d hunted on the antelope plain

I spread him about in the place he had chosen

A prayer and a breath

Of sage after rain

Sage after rain

Sage after rain