Six miles to mulberry
I want to run there
and recapture what I had then
A life that was just beginning
And oblivious to its end.
I want to feel the summer night
as though it were a satin sheet.
I don’t want to think of it as
just darkness wrapped in heat.

To enjoy the days and nights
as innocent as years pass...
Just to turn the page at will
and never break time’s glass.
This town serves as my youth
and it will forever remain to be
a symbol of a life wild and young
...six miles to Mulberry.

Six miles left to Mulberry
proclaims the sign outside Lafayette
What I wouldn’t give to travel back
into a time of life without regret.
Take me back to that small world
that I knew when I was with the Show.
Take me back to touch the life
that I now wish I could again know.

Traveling with the carnival
down highways and country roads.
There’s something that gets into you
and remains there as though a load.
You carry it through the rest of your life
aching to touch that life every year.
Growing older, shadows stretch
and then you come to know fear.

Fear that you’ll never know
that freedom ever again
...six miles to Mulberry...
That is still my plan
I’ve been driving those miles now
for nearly ten empty years
hoping to drive into my past
but I find that it’s never near.

I remember that small old town
within Clinton County’s fine lines.
Just to be back there with the carnival
and to live again in that fine time...

That was the first time for me to be away from home.
This was the first time, with the carnival, I did roam.

©February 3, 2005 Lori S. Maynard