Lyrics:

It's knowing that your door is always open and your path is free to walk,
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag rolled up and stashed behind your couch.
And it's knowing I'm not shackled by forgotten words and bonds and the ink stains
That have dried upon some line,
That keeps you in the backroads by the rivers of my mem'ry that keeps your ever
Gentle on my mind.

It's not clinging to the rocks and ivy planted on their colums now that binds me
Or something that somebody said because they thought we fit together walkin'.
It's just knowing that the world will not be cursing or forgiving when I walk along
Some railroad track and find
That you're moving on the backroads by the rivers of my memory and for hours
You're just gentle on my mind.

Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines and junkyards and the highways
Come between us
And some other woman crying to her mother 'cause she turned and I was gone.
I still run in silence, tears of joy might stain my face and summer sun might
Burn me 'til I'm blind
But not to where I cannot see you walkin' on the backroads by the rivers flowing
Gentle on my mind.

I dip my cup of soup back from the gurglin' cracklin' caldron in some train yard
My beard a roughning coal pile and a dirty hat pulled low across my face.
Through cupped hands 'round a tin can I pretend I hold you to my breast and find
That you're waving from the backroads by the rivers of my memory ever smilin'
Ever gentle on my mind.