Asphalt Bones

I met a man along the side,

Of a crumbling road to nowhere,

Leaning against some old forgotten sign.

He had a weary sun-worn countenance,

With a desert in his smile,

And a lonely ghost town sleeping in his eyes.

He said, “Let me tell a story,

Of a wanderer just like you,

Who thought he could outrun the passing days.

Well, like a wayward wind,

One day he swept on through,

And left us just as swiftly as he came.

He went on towards the sunrise,

Left his lives, his loves, his lands,

And disappeared into the hushing dusk.

And with only good intentions,

A curious soul, and his own two hands,

Answered only to the call of wanderlust.

And I suppose he must have wanted,

Something more than what he had,

Be it wealth, knowledge, or all the untouched earth.

But that’s the thing with wanting, dear,

Because for all that we might have,

We’ll never understand just what it’s worth.”

The stranger couldn’t tell me,

What had come of that lost boy,

If ever he had found his journey’s end.

I’m not sure I wanted to know,

Even if he’d heard it all,

The boy was happy, I hoped - or so I wanted to pretend.

I traced back along that forgotten way,

Quite disquieted and afraid,

A new longing beneath the normal homesick ache.

I went back to what I knew,

And I tried to just forget,

The lonely dust I’d left unsettled in my wake.

But I think about that man sometimes,

When the days refuse to slow,

Watching as the sun dips towards the hills.

I think about the boy,

Still wandering down some dusty road,

As if somehow he could make the time stand still.

Those roads are old and empty now,

And I find I’ve aged to match,

There’s no journeys left between my asphalt bones.

The longing just grows deeper,

And the homesick never left,

But those choices past have set my path in stone.

So now I think I do believe,

That boy got something right,

Something only wanderers seem to know.

And it’s a thing we all could learn,

If we had the courage and the sight -

To truly live, sometimes you have to go.

- E. S. Daine