Two Dollar Town

I've got a million dollar view of a two-dollar town The streets are safe at midnight 'cause there's no one else around Days crawl by like weeds taking over in the hollows At summer's end the children fly away with the swallows Is it a long time gone? Can you ever go home? Smoky old red diesel, days too long to measure Fine dust in the driveway, always talking about the weather Breathing in the evening dew settling on the windrows Silent at the sunset, don't waste words on what you know Wasn't that long ago; time doesn't move so slow We all gotta pick a hill to die on A mountaintop to make a stand Rows of clay you can rely on Or a paper tombstone in your hand The lights were still on in the dairy barn They found him in his Ford with a needle in his arm Wish I'd thought to ask him if his war was ever won He never talked about it even when the chores were done We're all fault lines; we're all dying all the time Maybe there's mercy in no decision left to make The last line that you sign on's still the deepest cut to take Surrender your kingdom to a stranger in the fall Who stares out at the cornfields and sees nothing there at all This is the season of tall grass; but like all things must pass We all gotta pick a hill to die on A hill of sand or a hill of corn But if you want to get away with murder Just make a killin' a million times more Now I always get a heartache driving past the headlands Listening to the radio instead of the rain I wish those golden fields hadn't flown away so far I'd trap all those glowing nights safely in a glass jar