Joan Shelley
No More Shelter
Pull up the horses and carry me back behind the lines
Back to the water, back with the gardens and the vines
Where two hands of ash and gold
Chase down my fever and wash me with soap
When half of us were losing and half of us were wrong
Well, a rose you planted
Leather and rope, fire inside the rock
The heavens open, I am like a child on the spot
Asking God, 'Why'd you come?
Was it all for some glory? Was it all for a song?'
And my eyes are still searching for a light in the fog
A sweetheart to sing for me
I was thrown from the center where I once so bravely spun
I was pulled through the colors, through the colors did I run
And my eyes were wide and gleaming
Though wind-whipped by the storm
There is no more shelter for the broken
I hear they still track me now
Dogs try to sniff out my home
I'll write you in the scars
Laid in trails by the jets headed home
How you mold me and move me still
I'm calling on your memory here alone in my cell
A time when you fed me, a time I was filled
But one of us must keep from crying