Heimkehr: In Between Berlin and the Great Plains

I'm already here,
on these Great Plains
that draw the storms of the summer
up like a great fit of temper
inside the body of a small child.
But I'm still feeling you inside me.

How can you be so far away,
when I can still taste the cool smoothness
of your water on my skin?
when the stink of your humanity
still clings to my clothes and burns my eyes?
How can you be so far away
when the beauty of your
damaged past still haunts me so?
when you've fed me so well
in my clumsy machinations
through your streets?

And I know,
that with every passing week,
the details of everything I adore about you
will begin to fade
and you'll become a dead caricature
of puppetry and mirrors
intangible at the edge of my vision
and fading evermore into the distance.

The adventures become episodes,
constrained by fences of time and space
until they finally fall under the realm of
"That was then, and this is now:
and it's time to move on."

Emigrant

(for U. Utah Phillips)

Not from here.
Just passing through
from nowhere in particular.
Some little town
that got plowed under
to make way for the latest
the greatest,
to make way for the bright lights
and the best conveniences
that money could buy
like we've never known before.

And we sold it all, even ourselves
with bright eyes and hopeful hearts
to the slick suits
who never once knew
the smell of the rain
falling through the trees

But I'm taking up too much
of your perfectly manicured space
with my torn clothes and my hobo stories.
I guess it's time I be moving on.