Miles From My Home

That's not just where I want to be, that's where I am. Searching. Fumbling. Waiting.

When I was a kid I was on the fringe. Not a part of one group, but accepted by all--hippies, greezers, blacks, the popular kids. I could play the game, but never joined a team. Part of the reason was a lot of family shit. Nurture or nature, it was just who I was. Who I am. I always had one friend. That one friend you could always trust and talk to and feel yourself around.

Second sons are the wandering ones
so we were the best of friends.
I never felt more like myself
than when I stood beside him then.

Miles from home. Out on the fringe. Like the coyote. Smart. Wary. Out on the perimeter, trotting along, stopping now and again to sniff the air. It's where and how I'm most comfortable. I made the mistake of trusting too many people who couldn't be trusted.

In the end I barely got away with my skin.

One night, it seems a long time ago, Sue and I were talking. And I told her if she told her friends about me, they'd tell her to run like hell. I was flat broke, emotionally and financially, I'm divorced with two kids, plus at that point I had a host of other problems. She told me she knew better, that that's not what she saw. It took me about three weeks to take all that in. Sniffing at it like a coyote. Smelling the wind. Trying to figure out what it was. Could I trust it? Remembering to another time when I said something like that to someone else.

It seems every time I turned around there was Sue. She put her money where her mouth was. She didn't run. And she didn't get too close. So for a while I just watched her. From a distance.

I didn't want to get too close. You don't know if you get too close if they'll suddenly turn on you, because you're close and that's what certain people do, draw you in close and then go for you. I've seen that. They're called borderlines. People with nothing inside so they draw you close then steal everything inside you to fill themselves up and leave you, for dead.

I don't ever want to lose my ability to get along by myself. Out there, miles from my home. Because I've learned so much and changed so much. How to survive, for one. I guess just like the coyote and the rattlesnake learned to get along, I'm made a certain way to get along with all the other species that live alongside me. Around me. Snakes bite and coyotes howl. I'm just glad I'm the one who gets to howl at the moon. I love the moon. And the stars.


No one in sight for fifty miles
Sleeping fields sigh as I glide across their spines.
If I can just reach the crest of that hill
This whole day will tumble, out the night will spill.

The sky as still as a spinning top
Shooting stars drop like burning words from above
If I could just connect all these dots
The truth would tumble like a Cynic vexed by love.

And yet people keep saying
I'm miles from my home,
Miles from my home.

I met you again in my sleep last night,
These are days of slow boats and false starts.
Hearts remain under lock and key,
You will be the one to set them both free.

And yet people will tell you
You're miles from your home,
Miles from your home.

But that's where I want to be.
Out there searching,
Out here fumbling,
Out here waiting
For you and you for me.

The moon hangs like a question mark,
Pale as milk, bold as promise.
When will you share these sights with us?
When will we hold you in our arms?

And people will tell them
We're miles from our home,
Miles from our home.