Waiting for a bus or train
Waiting for the light to change
Waiting for the rain to stop
Waiting for the shoe to drop
Waiting for a grade or raise
Waiting on roadwork delays
Waiting for another clue
Waiting just to hear from you
Waiting for the day to end
Waiting to see round the bend
Waiting for the phone to ring
Waiting through the cold for spring
Waiting for important news
Waiting to see who will lose
Waiting to prove if it’s true
Waiting just to hear from you
I want to show to you
The world through my eyes
To give to you the beauty
Of all life’s lows and highs
I want you to feel
The world as I do
To know its joy and love
Its pain and heartbreak too
I want to walk with you
Through time’s winding trails
To find in what I write
A thread of common tale
The rhythm circles round and round
The banjo chuckles and the fiddle cries
Through the guitar’s climbing harmonies
Our bluegrass music soars and sighs
Begin with blues of trouble, loss
The next, a freight train’s rhythmic ride
Then turn to faith and glory land
And end at the old home countryside
What other songs can lift the soul
Can sing its joy and cry its tears
To capture in one melody
Life’s hopes and sorrows, love and fears
On the outside looking in
This is where I’ve always been
I belong but have no place
Still I hold on just in case
On the outside looking in
Hoping this is when I’ll win
The door’s ajar, I step inside
But I’m ignored and pushed aside
On the outside looking in
Rejected, shamed, and hurt again
That world inside, I finally see
Is a twisted, warped reality
On the outside looking in
A better life I will begin
I find it’s outside I belong
Where I can heal, where I grow strong
Lines of ink on paper sheets
Are all I have to mark the trail
From me, from here, to you out there
Just a letter in the mail
You tell me snatches of your life
Some general, some in detail
I try to read between the lines
In your letter in the mail
In turn I send you bits of me
A window to my life unveil
Though all you see is through my eyes
In my letter in the mail
Maybe one day we will meet
Face-to-face complete the tale
Of stories sent across the sea
All our letters in the mail
The blazing sparks of friendship grow
From kindled flame to warming glow
People come and go in turn
Flames start up then lower burn
But always for that warmth will yearn
Where blazing sparks of friendship grow
Each piece of wood burns on its own
Uniquely makes its nature known
Slowly morph and meld until
Flames unite the space to fill
Though sharing heat and kindling, still
Each piece of wood burns on its own
At last the embers burning bright
Spread solid heat into the night
Differences unite to form
Common goals, to light and warm
A base to weather any storm
Within the embers burning bright
