Rest stops and road weary vagabonds
Peanut butter, water and stale bread;
Cookie crumbs and lip smirched paper cups
Somewhere's last weeks coffee stained newspaper
Blown out tires and the side of the road
Deep, thick, unmistakable, bear paw-prints
lie fallow ― undead in the mud
Feeling the raw silence of what you’re thinkin'
ooze out of a festering puncture wound within
Churning soliloquies gnawing away
at the unspooled threads fray,
understanding there’s no fear
in less than nothing to lose
Sometimes change happens
so fast you don’t even notice
We can wait a lifetime and never be sure;
never taking that first step that leads to a journey
of a thousand miles ― just a step away
It’s not some kind of bewitching
loneliness spell cast
never seeing another sole
in measureless hours and days
Passing moments languish imponderably,
there are no feelings I can see,
by looking away ―
always as blind as we want to be
Wanting what was taken more than what is given;
still doing the things we learned we shouldn't do again
The longest miles are the trodden ones
with only traces of learning how to be
alive ― off the grid; alone again
It’s a journey where there's no map to guide you
Just a deepening furrowed lifeline standstill
Stalled at a crossroads in the palm of your hand;
uncertainty deriding where you’re headed ―
both a reason and an excuse when we're not sure
we're not alone on such a long one way road
we've been out here traveling on
Forbearing the truth that holds my soul,
the only way through the ache
is through the wound
... and
I’ll get down this long road somehow
harlon rivers ... May 2018
... travelogue 3 of some
Notes ― lyric from: Side of the Road;
written by ... Lucinda Williams
'If I stray away too far from you,
don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you,
it doesn't mean I won't come back and
stay beside you
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go' ...
