Reason To Believe

(album: Nebraska - 2022)

Seen a man standing over a dead dog
By a highway in a ditch
He's looking down kinda puzzled
Poking that dog with a stick
Got his car door flung open
He's standing out on Highway 31
Like if he stood there long enough
That dog'd get up and run

Struck me kinda funny
Seemed kinda funny, sir, to me
Still, at the end of every hard day
People find some reason to believe

Now, Mary Lou loved Johnny
With a love mean and true
She said, "Baby, I'll work for you every day"
And bring my money home to you
One day, he up and left her
And ever since that
She waits down at the end of that dirt road
For young Johnny to come back

Struck me kinda funny
Funny, yeah, indeed
How at the end of every hard-earned day
People find some reason to believe

Take a baby to the river
"Kyle William," they called him
Wash the baby in the water
Take away little Kyle's sin
In a whitewashed shotgun shack
An old man passes away
Take the body to the graveyard
Over him, they pray

Lord, won't you tell us
Tell us—what does it mean?
At the end of every hard-earned day
People find some reason to believe

Congregation gathers
Down by the riverside
Preacher stands with a bible
Groom stands waiting for his bride
Congregation gone and the sun sets
Behind a weeping willow tree
Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on
So effortlessly

Wondering
Where can his baby be
Still, at the end of every hard-earned day
People find some reason to believe