All Nights Are Too Long

All nights are too long
When your lover's far away-

I chase the trains all night
The ones my thoughts are riding;
Hobos bound for anywhere but home.

Trains full of candle smoke
And down from comforters,
Trains mixing together a combustible dream
In their blurry eyed compartments.

My memory is westbound
My history behind me somewhere;
If I stay behind, I'm nowhere,
If I don't jump soon enough, I'm lost

I can't remember getting on at any station,
I never had a ticket stub
Nobody here seems to knows me-
Why have I always been afraid?

I'm the tear in a nun's eye
I'm the broken note in a crow's cry

The standing fall down on trains,
The sitting see everything swiftly pass them by
Before they can ring the bell-
I can see your eyes, out of a hundred windows

In every window, door and steeple
The faster, the farther I go, the more you keep up with me;
Haunting, like a vision
Soundless, like a dancing flame.

I sleep and wake fitfully,
Feeling the cabin vibrate-
Are the eyes inside or out now?

We can play like ghosts at midnight,
With the past and future;
We can pass through walls
As invisible as wind:

I'm the tear in a nun's eye
I'm the broken note in a crow's cry

Death teases us with the nearness of it's breath
Like when you look into a crowd
And happen to lock eyes with the one staring straight at you-
Even though you never saw them before,
And didn't know they'd be looking your way.

I wander past your outstretched arms
Looking for the other you,
The one outside my head
Who fills out all my waking dreams

When everyone's gone
Who will see the stars falling,
And who can give me absolution?

For I'm the tear in a nun's eye
I'm the broken note in a crow's cry-

Nights are too long
When your lover's far away.

written to Morning Song/Zero 7