Tony Joe White - Sidewalk Hobo lyrics

As footsteps echo softly to the early morning hours The slowness of his moves should be a warning But from the trash he digs He patchs socks and yesterdays flowers What a way to start a monday morning He might have been a carpenter at one time in his life And he built a lot of homes but never had one Or he could have been a poet Who had come upon some hard times And all that he had lived was just his sad poems He could have been a singer with a lot of promise But cigarettes and whiskey ruined his throat Now it was hard to remember even a simple tune Or the words to songs that he had wrote Now take me back to Memphis I've got to do some thinking Cause I've been in this city way too long And it lays heavy on my mind When I see another man Having to make the sidewalks his home