Yellow Roses on Her Gown

I was born in San Francisco when the bay was full of cruisers
Where the west wind smells of fishing boats for fifty miles around
My father wore a crew cut, he was lean and he was handsome
And my mother wore a sash of yellow roses on her gown

They would walk me down from Green Street
Pass cathedrals on the hill sides
And the carillons could fill the hearts of any one in town
I remember how they looked then, when their eyes were always living
When my father loved a girl with yellow roses on her gown

Then we moved to Placer County where the weather was a joker
And I watched my parents laughter turn from amber into ice
But my father never stumbled, he would tell me things would change soon
He would bear and bear the insults of a pair of loaded dice

And my mother stood beside him though her heart was on the hill side
Of a city where a soldier and his lover bedded down
And at night amid the whisper of the pines in Manzanita
She would cry into the sash of yellow roses on her gown

Now my father's living eastward by the Sacramento River
And he swears to me he's happy with his practice and some land
In the springtime and the summer when the fog is off the valley
I visit him on weekends, his grass is overgrown

Sometimes after dinner, I will gaze away the evening
In the attic at a sash of yellow roses on her gown