Nina Jo Smith - Mining for Gold

Mining for Gold
Words & Music by Nina Jo Smith (BMI)
© 2023 Redwood River Music (BMI)

A rabbit warren of abandoned veins
Running below ground
Broken glass, busted claim
Pulleys, bullet holes and chains

Graveyard drifting down a slope
Sun-bleached plastic flowers blow
Faces etched into the stone
Rattlesnakes making love on a dirt road

Everybody’s mining for gold
Everybody wants to feel the fever
Everybody wants a hand to hold
But not everyone can deliver

Hubcaps nailed to the outside wall
Roses struggle, Palo Verde grows tall
Jackrabbits scatter in the dusty sand
Young coyote roams the land.

Rusted bolts, busted fenders
Propane tanks, glass pipe embers
Hole in the ceiling, rot on the floor
Insulation peeking out by the screen door

Everybody’s mining for gold
Everybody wants to feel the fever
Everybody wants a hand to hold
But not everyone can deliver

The hand that reaches for mine reminds me
That the man behind that hand is not
The man who was so kind I won’t
Reach back to the hand of a man
Who’s not as kind as he was

I did not drive three hundred miles
To be part of this inventory
And for time to make windchimes of my bones
So I will walk away
And I will write my own damn story
‘bout how everybody’s mining for gold

Everybody’s mining for gold,
Everybody’s mining for gold.