Habit of Alone

Grew up in a small town in Tennessee.

We moved there back in nineteen-sixty-five.

Summer, the temperature was just beastly

I felt so bad I think I could've died.

It's not that I left friends in Detroit.

Few teachers there come inside my mind.

It's not the weather that I enjoyed.

I can't recall anything of that kind.

Anything new, I guess, is frightening.

Everything old, you're already used to.

Newness offers chances so exciting,

Possibilities that are seldom true.

I was a boy with a habit of alone

In a house without a secret place.

I had nowhere to call my very own.

A soybean field became my borrowed space.

Found my bunker for the war in my head.

Found my castle where I served as a knight.

Found my spaceship that through the heavens sped.

Imagination was my story of life.

That was many years ago, nearly a lifetime.

Imagination frequently my only friend.

But I'd not trade a moment of my prime,

Or a single moment up till the very end.