The list of people who’ve left fingerprints on my soul is a long one. I don’t mention names in this song, but many of them will be able to hear it and recognize themselves.
For six decades, I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by amazing people. This song is my way of acknowledging what they’ve left in me and how much of who I am carries a little of each of them.
Lyrics
Somebody's name gets written in
Long before you know what it means
A boy you loved when you were young
A woman who gave you your sons
A partner ridin' shotgun west
A smiling face you knew behind a desk
You don't know then who's gonna stay
Or who'll still be there forty years away
People come for a reason
People stay for a season
Sometimes one summer
Sometimes half your life
Sometimes many seasons
More than you can count
Then one day all that's left
Is what they gave your soul
Before they moved on to where they're needed now
I've watched blue lights in a rearview
And sunrise through a windshield too
I've slept with diesel in my clothes
And come back home, hay needin' mowin'
I've raised two boys into grown men
Buried people I still talk to each and every day
And learned that losin' someone
Ain't the same as losin' what they gave your soul
People come for a reason
People stay for a season
Sometimes one hard winter
Sometimes all your years
Sometimes many seasons
Long enough to change your name
Or change the way you see yourself
When you look in the mirror
Somebody can be gone
And still show up in a country song
Still ride through your mind
On an old stretch of road
Still make you laugh
Still make your eyes fill up
Still be gone nearly forty years
And somehow not be gone
There were kitchen tables, hospital rooms
Cheap motels and Sunday afternoons
There were uniforms hung by the door
Boots kicked off on someone else's floor
There were men I loved
There were women I loved
There were dogs that knew when I'd had enough
And every damn one of them
Are fingerprints on my soul
People come for a reason
People stay for a season
Sometimes long enough
To give you a family
Sometimes long enough
To break your heart half in two
Sometimes many seasons
Sometimes only one
But I don't call it wasted
Cause' life moved us on
If they changed the man I became
Then they're still here in who I am
People come for a reason
And for a season
No one ever really leaves