Refuge of the Roads

I met a friend of spirit
A drunk with sage's eyes
As 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"
And he sent me then to the refuge of the roads

I fell in with some drifters
Cast upon a beach town
Winn-Dixie cold cut thieves
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 'til then

The nets were overflowing
In the Gulf of Mexico
Ah, 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 'til 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
Oh, shine on your witness
Taking refuge in the ruins

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
For 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