Bridges

After I'd burned all my bridges again
And headed to some other government town
Trapped with rank strangers, where the fields had turned brown
That's when they told me that you were around

I'd taken a job at the assayer's office
It was lab work and called on some skills I had honed
Way back in the silverstrike days of November
Way up in the North Country bleakness of home

You'd rode into town in your 4-wheeled Explorer
Covered with dust, the grit on your face
And set up your shop at Hotel L'Aventura
'Mid whispers of diamonds and rubies and lace

In a heartbeat the boys were all over your case
And you spun out your stories into garments so fair
While I sat in my emptied-out office and wondered
Was it time to start packing my knapsacks again?

I thought--What a fool!--that you might come to see me
In my microscope arsenic leached the gold from the waste
But I just couldn't focus my heart to a distance
Where diamonds could equally glitter as paste

Now the train racks and rattles down the Mexican canyon
And cinders burn holes in my ragged blue jeans
In an hour or two I will come to the jungle
I'll stand on the platform in an ocean of green

And stare at the wanteds for Ché and Zapata
Faded and rotting but there just the same;
A cigar in my teeth, to keep off mosquitoes
In a land where no one will remember my name

(repeat first verse., then d.c. first line)