Personal Eclipse - The Weather Station

I remember the dry grass of Nebraska, grey to distant blue

I stopped on hills like slumping shoulders;

car cooling, I took off my shoes

I drove out west with my sister — she talks more than I do

When she fell silent, still I’d miss her

The sound of the wind coming through

I remember the smoky cups of coffee at the continental divide

Mesas rose up there beside me.

I felt like I’d arrived

I walked on the streets of California in the wail of car alarms

Men would shout out to me passing, a stranger with crossed arms

I remember the subtlety of canyons, black by the roadside

A cut in the rocks as I was passing, just a glimpse as you go by

If there’s something you always are choosing — you may not recognise

If there’s something you always are loosing — something disguised

Lately I find myself lonely — I wouldn’t have called it that before

I always took it as a comfort — what all the distance was for

If you can’t leave clean as a statement — so true that you almost wince

If you can’t leave, you get

Yourself taken — like a personal eclipse