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Refuge Of The Roads Lyrics

Artist: Joni Mitchell
Album: Hejira

I met a friend of spirit
He drank and womanized
And I sat before his sanity
I was holding back from crying
He saw my complications
And he mirrored me back simplified
And we laughed how our perfection
Would always be denied
"Heart and humor and humility"
He said "Will lighten up your heavy load"
I left him for the refuge of the roads

I fell in with some drifters
Cast upon a beachtown
Winn Dixie cold cuts and highway hand me downs
And I wound up fixing dinner
For them and Boston Jim
I well up with affection
Thinking back down the roads to then
The nets were overflowing
In the Gulf of Mexico
They were overflowing in the refuge of the roads

There was spring along the ditches
There were good times in the cities
Oh, radiant happiness
It was all so light and easy
Till I started analyzing
And I brought on my old ways
A thunderhead of judgment was
Gathering in my gaze
And it made most people nervous
They just didn't want to know
What I was seeing in the refuge of the roads

I pulled off into a forest
Crickets clicking in the ferns
Like a wheel of fortune
I heard my fate turn, turn turn
And I went running down a white sand road
I was running like a white-assed deer
Running to lose the blues
To the innocence in here
These are the clouds of Michelangelo
Muscular with gods and sungold
Shine on your witness in the refuge of the roads

In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn't see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms
Or this baggage overload
Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads

Comments/Interpretations

by Wes on 7/15/2008 1:33am
Very cool, great lyrics - feel like I'm on a road trip, but it's more...

by L~ on 8/24/2008 6:57pm
She's referring to Trungpa Rinpoche in the first (what is it?) paragraph.

Heart and humor and humility.

by marina on 6/28/2009 6:34am
i've come across this song after 30 years. It moved me then and it still does

by bua on 5/1/2010 5:27am
great song especially for those who appreciate music

by John C. Kimbrough on 3/27/2011 1:17am
Great!, Great!, Great!

by EAnderson on 3/28/2011 6:27pm
My Girl Joni, is A GENIUS!

by K2 on 5/15/2011 2:56pm
Genius, indeed! And the soul of what I consider Artist.

by Allan Taylor on 1/9/2012 5:09am
My favorite song!

by buzz on 12/15/2012 11:09pm
awesome voice,a masterpiece of a song . the whole album is perfection .

by Byron Dizon on 1/22/2013 6:50am
This song helped me to see truths that have forever changed my life. I clearly see the perfection of the universe and the contrasting weight of self importance vs. the relative minutia of human being.
Absolute genius!

by ajs on 11/17/2014 5:30am
the great jaco pastori on alembic bass. she is a genius