This Past Storm

This past storm recalled in me, my darling

A story that I thought you’d care to know

I’ve no place left to go

How I wound up in a hole so low my darling

With this strangest most dangerous brew ever known

Is all here in this note:

Oh, I cheated death in the kind of wreck that turns your hair to gray

They respected me, mistakenly, overestimating my age

So I broke out and headed south, before my dark roots could grow

And my cover was blown

I just thought that you should know

I found a town in east Colorado

Where I learned to stitch up tattered clothes

It was in my bones

The old man who was my teacher

Let me sleep inside the stove

I never felt less alone

Though I was as good a tailor as that town had ever seen

I couldn’t recognize this wool that was pulled right over me

In that sudden cotton-mouthed blindness, the only regret I could hold

Was letting you go

I just thought that you should know

So I awoke on this fishing boat, my darling

With a thousand men I do not know

A thousand miles from home

We all speak a different language

Cloaked in the smoke of a north Atlantic night

Just trying to live our lives

With what you lent I can pay my rent for my old dog and me

But I still can’t circumvent the seafloor that’ll be our home next week

I’m a reprobate and profligate who can’t navigate this far from shore, anymore

I just thought that you should know