Refuge Of The Roads

Lyrics

I met a friend of spirit  
He drank and womanized  
And I sat before his sanity  
I was holding back from crying  
He saw my complications  
And he mirrored me back simplified  
And we laughed how our perfection  
Would always be denied  
"Heart and humor and humility"  
He said "Will lighten up your heavy load"  
I left him for the refuge of the roads  
  
I fell in with some drifters  
Cast upon a beach town  
Winn Dixie cold cuts and highway hand me downs  
And I wound up fixing dinner  
For them and Boston Jim  
I well up with affection  
Thinking back down the roads to then  
The nets were overflowing  
In the Gulf of Mexico  
They were overflowing in the refuge of the roads  
  
There was spring along the ditches  
There were good times in the cities  
Oh, radiant happiness  
It was all so light and easy  
Till I started analyzing  
And I brought on my old ways  
A thunderhead of judgment was  
Gathering in my gaze  
And it made most people nervous  
They just didn't want to know  
What I was seeing in the refuge of the roads  
  
I pulled off into a forest  
Crickets clicking in the ferns  
Like a wheel of fortune  
I heard my fate turn, turn turn  
And I went running down a white sand road  
I was running like a white-assed deer  
Running to lose the blues  
To the innocence in here  
These are the clouds of Michelangelo  
Muscular with gods and sungold  
Shine on your witness in the refuge of the roads  
  
In a highway service station  
Over the month of June  
Was a photograph of the earth  
Taken coming back from the moon  
And you couldn't see a city  
On that marbled bowling ball  
Or a forest or a highway  
Or me here least of all  
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms  
Or this baggage overload  
Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads