We used to talk about the places we were going to get to,
the plans spread out like maps across the table, how we’d let you
in on all the details of the life we’d build when we got there —
halfway to anywhere, nobody told us anywhere was there.
The twenties burned with all the specific heat of possibility,
the certainties of futures and the beautiful futility
of planning in the dark without a light — but god the dark was lit,
and halfway to anywhere, you don’t know you’ve already quit.
The thirties had a reckoning, the math was getting clearer —
the gap between the expected and the actual getting dearer
in the currency of what it cost to close it — and the cost
was more than the account could hold, so some of it got lost.
You tell yourself it’s temporary, the slowing and the pause,
the recalibration toward the practical and its laws —
but the temporary has a way of settling in the walls
of the life you’re actually living, in the practical halls.
She still talks about the places on the list from years back —
the trip they’re going to take, the future on the planned track —
and he nods and does his part of planning with the appropriate
level of enthusiasm and the adequate
engagement with the vision — but behind the adequate,
the man who used to burn for it has been subdued and weighted
by the years of the halfway, by the comfortable and the here —
and the anywhere has faded to a pleasant atmosphere.
He doesn’t call it giving up — he calls it getting real,
the distinction between wisdom and the absence of the feel —
but the distinction’s getting thinner every year that adds its weight
to the halfway, to the paused, to the comfortable estate.
The kids talk about their futures with the fire that he remembers
from before the halfway, from the full-burn of the younger —
and he watches with a warmth that’s almost pure —
almost, because the warmth has its own qualification to endure.
The weekend finds him in the backyard with a beer and the afternoon,
the particular quality of light that late that fills the late afternoon
of middle-aged men sitting in their yards and calling it enough —
and halfway to anywhere is where you find that halfway’s not so tough.
The anywhere was always going to be a disappointment of the real —
the real is always smaller than the imagined and the feel
of the possible before the possible becomes the fact —
and halfway to anywhere is where you stop and don’t go back.
The halfway has its particular beauty in the clear afternoon light —
the beer, the yard, the fading of the day into the night —
and a man who’s halfway to anywhere is halfway through the good,
which is twice as far as a man who stood exactly where he stood.
Halfway is a distance and a place and a condition —
the distance from the starting point, the place of the partition
between the man who was going and the man who’s settling here —
and the condition is the quiet of the accepted and the clear.
He’s not going to anywhere anymore and anywhere’s not going to him —
and the halfway is the permanent and the permanent isn’t grim —
it’s just the yard and the beer and the afternoon of the life —
halfway to anywhere, the man, the afternoon, no fight.
[Chorus]
Halfway to anywhere, and anywhere’s a guess,
halfway to anywhere, and the halfway is the best
part of the trip, they say — before you know what anywhere is —
halfway to anywhere, and anywhere’s just this.