Somewhere,
over the sky and beyond it all,
runs a lost highway.
Scattered with points of no return
and shadows from the first twilight--
When the deeper land was young
and the highway was just a watermark
on a page of history from a still-undiscovered country
upon which a thousand tears
have already been shed.
The sky of my mind is here
and never found,
driving through midnight and starlight
and ever onward toward the next horizon.
These days,
the highway is scarred and burned,
turned and well-traveled by secrets.
Drifting along the highway to where ever it
might be going,
or speeding along, deranged enough
to believe it’s leading me homeward at last.
Memories of highway miles past
blur into memories of what lies ahead.
Some of them mine,
most of them from those traveling unseen
beside me.
Seekers and Nomads and Outcasts.
Members and Settlers and Hiders.
The forest I once called home
is replaced by a moebius ribbon of dry
and dreamless, wry
and pitiless, high
and hideous, aged
and immortal, contorted, compressed asphalt.
Shimmering and twisting gold lines draw me along
toward the beginning of an end
that I can’t really believe
ever existed.