Twisted Laurel - Robert Earl Keen

Just across the blue ridge, where the high meadows lay

And the galax spreads through the new mown hay

There’s a rusty iron bridge, cross a shady ravine

Where the hard road ends and turns to clay

With a suitcase in his hand there the lonesome boy stands

Gazing at the river sliding by beneath his feet

But the dark water springs through the black rocks and flows

Out of sight where the twisted laurel grows

Past the coal-tipple towns in the cold December rain

Into Charleston runs the New River train

Where the hillsides are brown, and the broad valley’s stained

By a hundred thousand lives of work and pain

In a tar-paper shack out of town across the track

Stands an old used-up man trying to call something back

But his old memories stain like the city in the haze

And his days have flowed together like the rain

And the dark water springs from the black rocks and flows

Out of sight where the twisted laurel grows