If one night, whilst I lie in my bed, the Lord told me
That all I ever had and more would disappear
I would never make another movie, never write another word
Never beat on against the currents like liberty told me I would
Nor spread my wings and dive into the valley, abseiling like a bird
I would never see the road, nor the stars in the sky
Or float among the satellites scratching marks into the sublime
All this constant renewal and business about striving
And work towards some visage for whom I’ve been pining
The Lord, if he gave me some peak into endless white-
I would sell it all to have one more day
on that plane, eastbound, across the Rocky Mountains,
their peaks etched into the ground for a millennium and more
and as the plane took off, some coastal city twinkled in the night
tracing cables of lights spanning wide across the inlet
lights like swirls of paint against endless dark glass.
And as the aluminium tube lifted me higher, higher
I begged it to slow, silent wailing, dire
kicking and screaming to be back down there with the people I-
I called it home, or some semblance thereof
Olive green doors hid some ghosts of love
and we got through every day just so we could huddle in some concrete lounges
and feel that great dark cold against our skins
and sit on boats to nowhere, roads to nowhere
beneath trolley cables and street lights of an unfamiliar place
mine at last and yet never quite so
and we would wait at bus stops to wander some place we never quite belonged in
until we did
and the wonder turned to familiarity, the temporal to the stable
and permanence wailed her old ache
falsely, alas, as she too will leave
but then it didn’t matter.
Some dreamers dreaming dreams of a golden dream
beneath condominium lights and towering black peaks
were liberty and the road and the sky
space and the sea and the continent and the life
we’ve become so much, some heirs to a-
And yet if the Lord asked me if I’d give it all away
I would throw it all away.
The night beats on, in this tiny red car
and the rain patters against the roof, soaking a city I call my home.
He carries me to sleep from the bed to my car
and I drift slowly back up into the sky
and look down at that city
first freedom, first love
and yet nothing ever mattered.
I know I will never feel as happy as I did then
I could sit on that plane, forever, ever.
But that kind of happiness belongs only to becoming
so I walk the line, forever, ever.
line of best fit 