Lyrics

Hickory Hill

Set the phone back down beside my bed
Wiped my cheeks and tried to clear my head
Made sure my suit was packed
Got my truck and tossed my tools in back

And with the morning highway stretched ahead of me
Somehow on that blurry blacktop I could see

Hickory Hill and a grove of crooked trees
Old bluegrass songs still ride the evening breeze
Summers with my granpa there
Pipe smoke in the mountain air
And the sound of midnight whippoorwills
Granpa was the handy type
And he carved his fav'rite pipe
From a tree up on Hickory Hill

Like granpa I'm a carpenter by trade
And the cross I wear is one I made
So I understood gramma's request
How it might relieve her loneliness

So I set up in their dusty old garage
and I swore in her eyes I could see a sad mirage

Hickory Hill and a grove of kissing trees
Lavender moons and a bed of fallen leaves
Evenings with my granpa there
Dancing in the mountain air
To the sound of distant whippoorwills
They raised seven kids
And my granpa made their cribs
From a tree up on Hickory Hill

Black umbrellas on a rainy morn'
Preacher talked of grief and life reborn
I held gramma in the misty chill
Sunshine split the clouds above the hill

Native soil upon the hand carved casket lid
It was part of him and now he's part of it

Hickory Hill and a grove of lonesome trees
Old memories hang beside the haunted leaves
Watchin' over granpa there
While he said his nightly prayers
With the ghosts of midnight whippoorwills
O and just like gramma said
I made his eternal bed
From a tree up on Hickory Hill

Sometimes I touch my cross with a shaking hand
And I see him walking on that sacred land

Hickory Hill
Hickory Hill
Up on Hickory Hill
Hickory Hill...


Copyright 2009
by Robert George and Cameron Earnshaw