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 shacked   By forgotten words and boons   And the ink stains   That have dried upon some line      That keeps you in the back roads   By the rivers of my memory   Keeps you ever gentle on my mind      It's not clinging to the rocks and I'd be planted   On their columns 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 cursin' or forgivin'   When I walk along some railroad track and find   That you're movin' on the back roads   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 the junk yards and the highways come between us      And some other woman 's cryin' to her mother   'Cause she turned and I was gone   I still might run in silence tears of joy, might stain my face   And the summer sun might burn me till I'm blind      But not to where I cannot see you   Walking on the back roads   By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind      I dipped my cup of soap back from a gurglin'   Cracklin' caltron in some train yard   My beard a roughen coal pile   And a dirty hat pulled low across my face      Through cupped hands round a tin   Can I pretend to hold you to my breast and find   That you're waving from the back roads   By the rivers of my memory   Ever you're just gentle on my mind