I’ve taken the highway, that path that leads from here to
there, from anywhere to everywhere it seems. Over
mountains and valleys, across rivers and streams, I’ve
hitched my way through cities and deserts, from ocean to
ocean, back home and away again. I’ve stood by the road
in the pouring rain, cars rolling by with somewhere to go.
Each time I look in a rear-view mirror, mile markers
passing by, my thoughts drift back to where I started,
when time was on my side.
There is always somewhere to go, something on my
mind, even if that something is nothing more than
venturing into the unknown. I’ve walked away from pain
and into the arms of love, each time the load a little bit
You flow, you do not understand,
The spring has eked you out of the earth.
You fell from the storm, you barely coalesce
Before the journey begins.
A gust of wind from a cloud’s dead eye
Blows you onto the clay of the north.
A pond, where the spawn of a million frogs
Grope in the steam of batrachian suns.
At the end, a hesitant stream.
Gentle, the grass barely parts in your path.
By noon, you lay blind in the sun’s deep maw.
You fear you are the plaything of the world,
A god whose cruelty is your solitude.
You flow, you do not understand,
You cannot feel your strength.
The folly of your winding way.
I COME to you, blind, hunted creeping things,
I come your way ;
Though I had chosen sun-sweet air and wings
And the blue day.
Now through the clinging darkness I must creep,
Dim citizens, with you my tryst to keep.
I've had my soaring time, my long, light day.
Shall I complain
If for a space I go a heavier way
In bonds and pain ?
The lords of life know neither high nor low,
The heart of man by many a road must go.
Far out from the whirlpool cities
They call and they call to me
Where the journey ends —
My infinite Friends
The Wind and the Sea.
Tonight the Wind in the inland woods,
Where my sheltered house is set,
Carries the rush of the sea waves past
Till my cheeks feel cold and wet.
And I smile and shudder. . . .
"What wouldst thou of me
O Wind and Sea?"
Far out from the whirlpool cities
They call and they call to me
Where the Journey ends —
My infinite Friends
Looking up the hill
The road was long before me.
This road is longer.
Night, and I travelling.
An open door by the wayside,
Throwing out a shaft of warm yellow light.
A whiff of peat-smoke;
A gleam of delf on the dresser within;
A woman's voice crooning, as if to a child.
I pass on into the darkness.
It was always the place where our farewells were taken,
When we travelled to the north.
I remember there was one who made some journey,
But did not come back.
Many years they waited for him,
At last the one who wished the most to see him,
Was carried out of this selfsame door in death.
Since then all our family partings
Have been at another door.
I rose up with the sun
And climbed the hill.
I saw the white mists run
And shadows run
Down into hollow woods.
I went with the white clouds
That swept the hill.
A wind struck the low hedge trees
And clustering trees,
And rocked in each tall elm.
The long afternoon was calm
When down the hill
I came, and felt the air cool,
The shadows cool;
And I walked on footsore,
Saying, "But two hours more,
One road leads out to the country-side;
One road goes by on its way to town;
And always, as long as the sun is guide,
The feet that love them go up and down.
After the evening star's white light
Has lured from the hills or the lighted town.
There are other feet all through the night.
Following dreams up and down.
I have moved west, I travel with the sun;
You cannot hold, you cannot hinder me.
There are no ends for what I have begun —
There are no resting places where I run,
Until I am surrendered to the sea.
And in the after silences
Of flower-lit distances I'll be,
And who would find me travels far
In lands unsung of minstrelsy.
Strong winds shall cross my secret way,
And planet mountains hide my goal,
I shall go on from pass to pass,
By monstrous rocks, a lonely soul.
I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains
of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men
and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall
pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he
answers : " Omaha."