I Guess This Is Fate...

That day the baby blue sky was hung wide open
As I looked back on that summer sun's fading horizon
Returning from my journey lasting a season
And as I opened the door to come home again
I saw your letter there, lying upon the table

I picked it up, the envelope was left open
I read your words so careful in cursive they were written
Telling of how you've got to keep on movin'
Said you just can't sit here dead and frozen
Locked up like a wild stallion in a stable

I read you said you'd take my journey with me
You said if I'd have you you'd come gladly
Wherever my path was going, back to Spain or Italy
We'd go together wherever the wind will carry
And we had all the time in the world

But you had others waiting for you back in the city
You said you couldn't wait forever on me
And I knew that all to be true, certainly
But you said you'd wait one more week under the oak tree
Where you first had my head swirled

And I ran outside I saw the leaves fell for autumn
In the field that oak tree was alone and barren
As the moon's crest hung over me, my heart had fallen
I just sat and smoked on my porch
As I used to do now and then

And I'm a day late, and I'm a buck short
And I know you waited as long as you could wait
So I guess this is fate

And you're a thousand miles away from me now
And I can't do anything to help it anyhow
There's nothing this distance here could allow
But I'll keep hope we'll meet again someday somehow
Maybe it'll happen only if it's fate

And I'm a day late, and I'm a buck short
And I know you waited as long as you could wait
And so I guess this is just fate

And now the wind blows those dead leaves around my feet
As I walk out to my mailbox on the gravel street
Where on starry nights we once would meet
After each past summer day of dazed heat
And it was all only ever fate

I'm a day late and I'm a buck short
And I know you waited as long as you could
And so I guess this is fate