Ever seen a grown man crying?
I did just yesterday.
Got to thinking about my mother
And the times I saw her pray.

Folded hands upon the table
Needing help to face the day
With the prairie wind a moaning
As her hope was ripped away.

A boy would come, just five years old
Upon this sacred scene.
“Mama, why are you crying?
Didn’t know that I’d been mean.”

“Oh sweetheart child, it isn’t you
it’s the wind that makes me sad.”
It reminds of my own childhood
And the things I never had.”

Health and wealth and happiness
Ain’t what you always get.
The prairie life you read in books
Has another side to it.

“Hey Ma, should I sing you a song
or maybe shoo them flies?”
She’d hug me hard then kiss me
And work to dry her eyes.

“I know, tell me the story Ma,
‘bout that sweet life with no tears.
The good things that you see for us.
Ma…tell me ‘bout them years.”

Well, she’d dry her eyes on her apron
Then smile with a far off stare
And tell me what a life I’d have
Off in the grand somewhere.

When you see an old man crying
And you don’t know what to say.
He’s just thinking about his mother
And it’s on a windy day.