Nine Hundred Miles

All days bind. Pages stick to one another, wrapped in thin wire
But one caught my eye this week, new model homes
Lit sparingly by candles, distant fog through the window
Painted peach by the city lights.

And I thought hard about distance
Sitting outside on a damp, cold slab
Of street, smoking. Gazing upward
The teary sky no blacker than
The soot of my shortcomings
A life I thought unshouldered
Cast away.

But now, in this strange, new light
I hear mixed sounds of traffic and a voice
Unmistakeably my own, screaming over
Nine hundred miles of God's forgotten earth.