Exit 178

©1997, Scott Ainslie. All rights reserved.

I found you burying your face, like a boy who cries:
Ragdoll legs and broken arms, one shoe off and one shoe on.
Rain trickles inside the collar: Yellow slicker, 3:00 a.m.
Silent, skewed and thickening----I touch your shadow with my hand.

And just outside the cast of the headlights,
Off the back of retinas rich with blood
Comes a reflection---barely seen,
Wild eyes turn from the road.

I still see the trailer weaving. I still see the misty lights.
High above the hillcrest dancing, brakelights smear a charcoal sky.
And tonight a stranger empties your pockets:
a toothbrush, comb, six dollars and change.
Lying alone on the pavement, your T-shirt soaked with a darkening rain.

And just outside the cast of the headlights,
Off the back of retinas rich with blood
Comes a reflection---barely seen,
Wild eyes turn from the road.

Semis, like guardian angels, on the overpass tonight,
Standing on a shining highway, in the beautiful circling lights.

Dawn comes with its back to me---a dervish spinning crazily.
The wounded night still bleeds---something in my memory:
I used to fear the unknown eyes that held me in their hollow light.
Somehow they would always find me---Did they come for you tonight?

And just outside the cast of the headlights,
Off the back of retinas rich with blood
Comes a reflection---barely seen,
Wild eyes turn from the road.

Semis, like guardian angels, on the overpass tonight,
Standing on a shining highway in the beautiful circling lights.
Somehow they would always find me,
will they come for me tonight?

PERSONNEL:

Scott Ainslie: Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
Scott Petito: Bass
Jerry Marotta: Drums/Percussion
Marc Shulman: Electric Guitars
Peter Vitalone: Piano
Leslie Ritter & Beth Reineke: Harmony Vocals

The title of this song refers to an exit off Interstate-85 in Durham, NC, where coming home one evening at a little before three a.m., I found a motorcyclist who'd dumped his bike.

I managed to stop the late night truckers behind me by pulling into the center of the two lanes and slowing down, flashers on. I parked on the shoulder and got to him first.

The bike was laying on its side, quiet, its headlight staring off into the woods, a hundred yards beyond the rider who was wrapped in a yellow rain slicker, lying diagonally in the center of the road.

We protected his body and shepherded his soul, in the headlights of those tractor trailers, in a drizzling rain.

Over the next three days, I wrote a poem about it. A month or so later, I expanded it into a song.

Sometimes we write to embrace life, sometimes to put a little distance between us, a buffer.