I need to feel it solid, need to feel the push-back when I step,
Need to know the earth is answering the pressure that I’ve kept,
Packed inside my heels from every mile I’ve walked toward something real,
The ground under my feet is the most honest thing I feel.
Men will lie to you in conference rooms with documents and light,
Women will misdirect you with the warmth of what seems right,
Systems will inform you that the path is over there, not here,
But the ground beneath your boots is incorruptible and clear.
The ground under my feet tells me where I’ve been,
Tells me what I’ve covered and the cost of what I’ve seen,
The ground under my feet is the only map I trust,
Solid under pressure and returning clay to dust.
I’ve walked the high-pile carpet of the executive’s domain,
I’ve walked the broken asphalt of the neighborhoods of pain,
I’ve walked the gravel drives of men who built their world by hand,
And the ground was always teaching what the books could not withstand.
There’s a knowledge in the gradient, in the slope of what you’re crossing,
In the bog that sucks your ankles and the ridge-line worth the costing,
In the flat expanse that tricks you into thinking nothing’s steep,
And the sudden fall from nowhere where the promises do not keep.
So before I make a claim or push a border out another inch,
I walk the perimeter and listen and I never once will flinch,
Because the ground beneath me has a language all its own,
And the man who reads it right will never die without a home.