I met a friend of spirit
But drunk with sages 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
Hard on humor and humility
He said,
well lighten up your heavy load And he sent me then to the refuge
of the roads
Fell in with some drifters
Cast upon a beach town
When Dixie called cab thieves And highway hand-me-downs
And I wound up fixing dinner For them in Boston gym
I went up with affection Thinking back down the roads to him
The nets were overflowing In the Gulf of Mexico
Oh 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
Until
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-ass deer
Running to lose the blues To the innocence in here
These are the clouds of Michelangelo
Muscular with cards and sun gold
I'll shine on your witness Taking refuge
in the roads
And highway service station Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
You couldn't see a city On that marble bowling ball
Or a forest
Or a highway
Or make it least of all
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms
With this baggage overload Westbound and overloaded
Taking refuge
In the roads