Wandering Amidst the Llano Estacado

Across this dashboard’s dusty glass, the modern world fades out,
Transformed into vistas of flat terrain that breed a quiet doubt.
I drive this truck past saltbush grass beneath the beating sun of lead,
As light and heat cook sage and sky into blistering mirages of the dead.

Oh, the Llano has no borders, and the Llano leaves no track,
We’re marching into nowhere now and we’ve burned our bridges back.
With our missing-needle compass and a ghost-wind at our heel,
We’re just wandering amidst the Llano in a land that cannot feel.

The engine hums a lonely tune across the tableland,
Where history bleeds into the soil and shifts like desert sand.
I swear I hear the clank of steel, the press of iron boots,
The echoes of Spanish viajeros that never put down roots.

They sought their golden Seven Cities, across the canyons deep,
But only found this sea of grass where ancient phantoms sleep.
The wooden stakes they drove to steer are lost like a drifting foam,
Leaving only the ancient tales of ghosts who never made it home.

Oh, the Llano has no borders, and the Llano has no track,
We’re marching into nowhere now and we’ve burned our bridges back.
With our missing-needle compass and a ghost-wind at our heel,
We’re just wandering amidst the Llano in a land that cannot feel.

My radio turns to static hiss, the air grows heavy and dry,
As armored shadows walk the ridge before my weary eye.
They march alongside pickup trucks and fences made of wire,
Conquistadors of phantom wealth, consumed by dead desire.

Yet in these shifts of blowing dust, a heavier shadow falls,
A mirror to a younger land that ignores its truest calls.
This Llano spreads from edge to edge, a vast and boundless frame,
And now our Republic wanders about, forgetful even of its name.

Oh, the Llano has no borders, and the Llano has no track,
We’re marching into nowhere now and we’ve burned our bridges back.
With our missing-needle compass and a ghost-wind at our heel,
We’re just wandering amidst the Llano in a land that cannot feel.

We threw away the compass stars that used to guide our flight,
And traded endowed convictions for a fleeting neon light.
Like Coronado’s blind advance across this featureless floor,
We march toward golden illusions, unsure of what they’re for.

The stakes we drove to mark our laws, the truths we swore to keep,
Are buried now beneath the sand where modern cynics sleep.
No landmark stands to steady us, no mountain points the way,
Just flat, unending highways where the vision bleeds to gray.

Oh, the Llano has no borders, and the Llano has no track,
We’re marching into nowhere now and we’ve burned our bridges back.
With our missing-needle compass and a ghost-wind at our heel,
We’re just wandering amidst the Llano in a land that cannot feel.

Our Country wanders out of bounds, disconnected from the past,
A stumbling future in the dark where shadows stretch so vast.
We’ve lost the grand capacity to orient our stride,
And wander now in aimless arguments and broken, hollow pride.

The bison paths now paved with oil, wind turbines spin on slow,
No leaders point toward the Beulah Land where we were meant to go.
This mighty nation built on forward march has lost its guiding chart,
We’re stranded now on a tableland, on a desert of the heart.

Oh, the Llano has no borders, and the Llano has no track,
We’re marching into nowhere now and we’ve burned our bridges back.
With a dead compass before us and a ghost-wind at our heel,
We’re just wandering amidst the Llano in a land that cannot feel.

I tip my hat to the orange sky ushering in the panhandle night,
Just a cowboy and his phantom host dissolving into fading light.
We watch a drifting empire fade into the western red,
Five centuries of aimless souls, still wondering where we’re led.

Print