Troubadour

I think back, now and then, just how lucky I’ve been
With the lands I’ve been privileged to know,
All the curious faces and magical places I’ve seen,
How in many a new land I’ve taken a new hand
In friendship beginning to grow,
My first trip at eighteen and the many long years in between.

When I first left my land and arrived in Japan,
A whole new world was opened to me,
And the people I saw and the new culture all were so strange.
Though at first I was blind, I was opening my mind
And I soon was beginning to see
That our smiles were the same, and with that came the start of the change.And the more that I saw, there was more that I wanted to see,
And right from the start, I gave thanks in my heart
That this chance had been granted to me.

University inside the Wall of Berlin
In the seventies seems like a dream
And I still count my time there among the best years of my life.
As my studies went forth, a young girl from the North-
Country came, and we soon were a team,
And in spring, in the shade of the elms there, I made her my wife.When the summers would come I would put out my thumb
Just to see where a new road would lead—
Copenhagen or Bergen or Amsterdam—give me a ride!
Maybe Paris as well, maybe Stockholm or Helsinki,
Only a few things I’d need,
Never knowing how far, my guitar always there by my side.How the time seemed to fly as my path took me hither and yon,
But I saved all I could of my memories and friends
In my journals as I traveled on.

I can feel the heat still from the day Broken Hill
Was a hundred fourteen in the shade,
Hear the magical songs of the bell birds and magpies at dawn,
Where the Ghost Gums grow tall and the forest rains fall,
Smell the scent of the fragrance they made,
Feel the land cry for rain where the Nullarbor Plain stretches on.On New Zealand’s South Island I’ve traveled the high land
To where the Fox River is born
In its glacier of ice, ere it slices its way to the sea;
From the Cape in the East to Otago
I’ve feasted my eyes on her many a morn;
With her mountains and rivers a part of me ever will be.And the more that I saw, there was more that I wanted to see.
And right from the start, I gave thanks in my heart
That this chance had been granted to me.

Now, from Sydney’s white sails to the green Yorkshire Dales,
The Aegean’s indelible blue
Off the cliffs of Dubrovnik, to Reykjavik, strange on the tongue,
And from Montevideo to Botany Bay, from Managua to Mexico too,
In the pubs from Bemidji to Belfast my songs I have sung.

And Duluth, Minnesota’s the place where I’ll go
When it’s time to be settling down
To a home on the hill overlooking the Lake of Superior
With the sunlight at play on the breast of her bay
And her autumn’s incredible crown —
How I long for her song! Everywhere I have gone, I could hear her.How I’ve longed for her song—everywhere I have gone,
If I listened, I always could hear her!

(C) 2002, Gary D. Bolstad, KrikitMusic