Letras de 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
Past cathedrals on the hillside
And the carillons could fill the hearts
Of anyone 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 hillside
Of a city where a soldier
And his lover met her dying

And at night amid the whisper
Of the pines and Manzanita
She would cry into a 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 would gaze away the evening
In the attic at a sash
Of yellow roses on her gown