There’s a pale moon rising tonight in the Eastern sky.
I’m just sitting here, staring at his lonesome face.
I can’t tell my troubles to the moon, ’cause he’s up too high,
But even the moon can see that I’m out of place.
Now I don’t suppose there’s nothing wrong with being alone,
And know that there’s times every man’s going to feel fear.
But it don’t seem a man’s heart ought to be cold as a stone,
Or shaking to the bottom of his soul like a wildwood deer.
But I look up in the sky, and the stars are wrong.
And I try to get my bearings, but the rhyme and the reason’s gone.
My thoughts are lost and scattered, like a poem written in the sand.
I’m reaching out in the darkness, but I can’t find a lovin’ hand.
Now, the highway’s a temptation: it could take me back from where I came.
And there’s a rifle on the wall could send me someplace that I never been.
But there’s nowhere in this wide and weary world where I can feel the same
As before I failed to fear my fate, and fell into this fix I’m in.
And there’s a pale moon rising in the Eastern sky tonight.
He’s seen a lot of lonely lovers’ lucky breaks ain’t broke quite like they planned.
It don’t seem to matter any more if it was wrong or right:
Now I’m paying with my soul for something I can never understand.
Still I look up in the sky, but the stars are wrong.
And I try to get my bearings, but the rhyme and the reason’s gone.
My thoughts are lost and scattered, like a poem written in the sand.
I’m reaching out in the darkness, but I can’t find a lovin’ hand.