Runestones in the Rearview (Version 2)

Verse

Pops laid concrete for thirty years, never owned the ground

Carved his initials in wet curbs when the foreman wasn't around

Said every slab's a ledger, every crack's a debt repaid

Fed six mouths on scraps of overtime and lemonade

I used to trace his handprint pressed in gray before it dried

Learned the block by markings, not by streetlights, not by pride

He buried scars in mortar, kept his aching out the frame

Told me legends don't need cameras, just a steady hand and name

Pre-Chorus

How you read a language carved in ash and stone

How you find your way when the map is bone

Somewhere in that concrete he left me a sign

I follow every mark like it's mine, like it's mine

Chorus

Runestones in the rearview, still they point me home

Every crack he filled is a road I walk alone

Ash on his hands turned to gold in the stone

Runestones in the rearview, I ain't never lost, I ain't never lost

Verse

Now I'm laying my own foundation, different kind of trade

Booth instead of trowel, but the debts still get repaid

Left my mark on the corner where his handprint used to be

Same gray dust on my knuckles, different century

Cousins ask me how I made it, I just point down at the ground

Tell them read between the cracks, that's where the truth is found

He never got the flowers, but the block still holds his name

Every step I take is proof the man was never plain

Pre-Chorus

How you read a language carved in ash and stone

How you find your way when the map is bone

Somewhere in that concrete he left me a sign

I follow every mark like it's mine, like it's mine

Chorus

Runestones in the rearview, still they point me home

Every crack he filled is a road I walk alone

Ash on his hands turned to gold in the stone

Runestones in the rearview, I ain't never lost, I ain't never lost

Bridge

Found out some of them stones marked men who never made it home

Debts he paid in silence so their kids could walk alone

That's the part he never told me, that's the weight inside the gray

Now I carry it forward, that's the only way to pay

Chorus

Runestones in the rearview, still they point me home

Every crack he filled is a road I walk alone

Ash on his hands turned to gold in the stone

Runestones in the rearview, I ain't never lost, I ain't never lost