VAGABOND SOUL

Hungry taste of wanderlust
roams within this flesh,
can’t stop now, have to go on—
I haven’t seen it yet.
Where I stop next, I don’t know,
can’t even make a prediction,
just something new before my eyes
sating this addiction.

Homes I knew and left behind
were only in my mind,
the spirit chaffed, burned to leave,
the body bided time.
Don’t know if they live or breath,
the family I once had,
lovers, children, fade away
I was never a great dad.

Can’t say why I wander on,
what I think I’ll find,
after twenty years I’ve seen it all,
but can’t leave this behind.
Another truck-stop diner here,
another waitress in bed,
tomorrow she’ll be far behind,
to her I will be dead.

I remember when this was fresh,
all that was on my mind,
when I was young and knew it all,
and had nothing but time.
The youth is gone by the wayside,
but the impulse still remains,
a forty-something wanderer,
with nothing to his name.

My feet they ache, my back is strained,
my reason cries to stop,
what is it that the drives me on?
Why can I not block
the urge to go ‘round the next bend,
to trudge on through the cold?
I rue the day God gave to me,
this cursed vagabond soul.