Eddie Foree

KANSAS
Oh, Kansas,
What an orphan you can be,
Out there all by yourself,
Few have loved you truly,
Though many have tried,
Most ran off and left you,
Still You're full of pride,
You're a proud old land.

Kansas,
Oh, Kansas,
You are so plain,
Without oceans
Or mountains
Or canyons
Or seas
Or sugar cane.

The wind and the rain
They bend and pummel you,
Washing and combing and twisting your grass,
Busting your boughs
And arm-wrestling your trees.

Yet, no place else on earth
Has your big-eyed, blue-gas, wheat-smellin' sky,
Your bow-legged flint hills,
Your sprawlin' blue grass
Speckled with black and tan white-faces,
Nor your naked nothingness,
So empty and free.

You're a curly-headed farm boy
Running bare-foot through the middle of the world.
You're a honey-freckled farm girl,
Fresh as peaches in a bowl of sweet cream.
You're a billion sunflowers
Growing wild along side of the road.

Like a throw of quilted patches,
Your corn and your pumpkins,
Your wheat and your beans
Are embroidered, and stitched
With barbed-wire fences and railroad tracks.

Kansas,

Oh Kansas,
Though the wooly wild west
That you once spawned,
And cowboys loved,
Again can never be,

I'd like a long ride down
Your dusty trail
To dream about
Your hustlin' history.

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And I call it home.
You know what I mean.
It's where all of your kin
Want to know where you've been
And what all you've seen.
And if ever in need
Where ever I roam,
There's always a friend
With a dollar to send
To get me back home.

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