You Held The Board

[Verse 1]
The Kiowa County line sign still has buckshot in the O.
It's been twenty Julys, the sun has bleached it down to bone.
I'm walking the Rosewood Trestle, where the creosote smell is thick,
The air's so hot it shimmers off the stones in the dry creek.

[Chorus]
I wasn't building a damn thing, I was just falling apart.
You held the board steady while I tried to make the saw start.
It's a quiet kind of lesson I couldn't understand.
I was trying to mend a railroad tie, you were mending a man.

[Verse 2]
My world was two new houses then, with a silence in between.
I was trying to join the pieces up of a life I'd never seen.
You sat beside my grandpa's toolbox, didn't say a single word,
Just put your hands over my hands, a promise I misheard.

[Chorus]
'Cause I wasn't building a damn thing, I was just falling apart.
You held the board steady while I tried to make the saw start.
It's a quiet kind of lesson I couldn't understand.
I was trying to mend a railroad tie, you were mending a man.

[Bridge]
You looked at the grain of the oak tie and said, "It's quarter-sawn and true.
Some things are made to carry weight they never even knew."
And you didn't flinch or pull away from the splinters in my grip.

[Chorus]
I wasn't building a damn thing, I was just falling apart.
You held the board steady while I tried to make the saw start.
It's a quiet kind of lesson I couldn't understand.
I was trying to mend a railroad tie, you were mending a man.

[Outro]
Yeah, you held the board.
On the Rosewood Trestle.