I was not lost

You know, folks always say a man gets lost when he takes the wrong road. But I don’t think that’s true. Sometimes he knows exactly where he is. He just doesn’t have the strength to tell anybody. It was a Thursday evening when I pulled out of town. The rain was tapping on the windshield like fingers on an old kitchen table. I had twelve dollars in my coat, half a tank of gas, and a photograph of my mother tucked behind my license. She was smiling in that picture. The kind of smile mothers keep even when they know their boy is breaking. I was not lost I was just too tired to be found I was not gone I just laid my heart down Somewhere between the old church bell and the cold hard ground I was not lost I was just too tired to be found I stopped at a diner where the coffee tasted like yesterday and the waitress called me “honey” like she’d been doing it since 1969. There was an old man in the corner talking to nobody, stirring his cup long after the sugar was gone. He said, “Son, I don’t mean to bother you, but you look like a man who left home without leaving.” I laughed a little. Not because it was funny. Because it was true. He told me he had a daughter once. Said she ran off chasing bright lights and came back chasing sleep. He said he never asked her where she’d been. He just opened the door and let the porch light do the talking. Then he pushed a folded napkin across the table. On it he had written: “Call your mother before the silence learns your name.” I was not lost I was just too tired to be found I was not gone I just laid my heart down Somewhere between the old church bell and the cold hard ground I was not lost I was just too tired to be found So I drove. Past the feed store. Past the school where I once won a spelling prize. Past the field where my father taught me that a man can cry as long as he keeps driving straight. And when I got to my mother’s house, the porch light was still on. I sat there for twenty minutes with my hands on the wheel, too ashamed to knock, too tired to leave. Then the door opened. She didn’t ask me what happened. She didn’t ask me why I hadn’t called. She just stood there in her slippers and said, “Your supper’s cold, but I kept it for you.” I was not lost I was just too tired to be found I was not gone I just laid my heart down Somewhere between the old church bell and the cold hard ground I was not lost I was just too tired to be found Now every evening, I leave my porch light burning. Not because I’m waiting for someone. But because somewhere out there there’s a man driving through rain, telling himself he’s lost. And maybe what he really needs is one small light that doesn’t ask any questions.