Lost Cabin
for Mildred Dolores Orr

[intro]

[verse]
You sold your flowers in Louisiana,
in the wet and easy green,
then you left the cypress for the sagebrush
and a country hard and clean.
You followed your sister to Shoshoni town
and you made your home by the road —
you lifted up your eyes unto the hills
and your help came from the Lord.

[chorus]
You were signed, but never numbered,
not one of any run.
They stamped a number on the rest —
you were given the only one.
That's how the Lord has loved you, Grandmother:
not counted, only known.

[verse]
You drove the letters out to Lost Cabin,
twenty-two miles through the cold,
where they burned the wax away at daybreak
and the bronze ran to the mold.
You watched a rider rise out of the sand
outlive the hand that poured him —
and everything that we are, Grandmother,
came up under your own hand.

[chorus]
You were signed, but never numbered,
not one of any run.
They stamped a number on the rest —
you were given the only one.
That's how the Lord has loved you, Grandmother:
not counted, only known.

[bridge]
Sissy, there's no second casting,
there is no second mold.
The catalogue never counted you —
He numbered every hair.
He kept that road to Lost Cabin,
never slumbered, never slept.

[outro]
Lift up your eyes, Grandmother,
He knew your name before Lost Cabin.
They called that place Lost Cabin —
He never lost you once.
You never called Him anything but Jesus,
and He has kept your going out,
and He will keep your coming in,
from this time forth and evermore.

