Lyrics to
Refuge Of The Roads

This version of Refuge Of The Roads was released by Joni Mitchell in 1976.

Visit the Joni Mitchell Lyrics profile at Decade Lyrics - it has the Refuge Of The Roads lyrics as well as the rest of the songs by Joni Mitchell.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to Joni Mitchell or about the 1970s in general.

I met a friend of spirit
He drank and womanized
And I sat before his sanity
I was holding back from crying
He saw my complications
And he mirrored me back simplified
And we laughed how our perfection
Would always be denied
“Heart and humor and humility”
He said “Will lighten up your heavy load”
I left him for the refuge of the roads

I fell in with some drifters
Cast upon a beachtown
Winn Dixie cold cuts and highway hand me downs
And I wound up fixing dinner
For them and Boston Jim
I well up with affection
Thinking back down the roads to then
The nets were overflowing
In the Gulf of Mexico
They were overflowing in the refuge of the roads

There was spring along the ditches
There were good times in the cities
Oh, radiant happiness
It was all so light and easy
Till I started analyzing
And I brought on my old ways
A thunderhead of judgment was
Gathering in my gaze
And it made most people nervous
They just didn’t want to know
What I was seeing in the refuge of the roads

I pulled off into a forest
Crickets clicking in the ferns
Like a wheel of fortune
I heard my fate turn, turn turn
And I went running down a white sand road
I was running like a white-assed deer
Running to lose the blues
To the innocence in here
These are the clouds of Michelangelo
Muscular with gods and sungold
Shine on your witness in the refuge of the roads

In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn’t see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of all
You couldn’t see these cold water restrooms
Or this baggage overload
Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads

---

Want more lyrics and songs by Joni Mitchell?

Joni Mitchell has released many songs over the years besides Refuge Of The Roads. Joni Mitchell released songs from 1968 to 2007 spanning across albums like Song To A Seagull, Clouds, Ladies Of The Canyon, Blue, For The Roses, Court And Spark, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, Hejira, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Mingus, Wild Things Run Fast, Dog Eat Dog, Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm, Night Ride Home, Turbulent Indigo, Taming The Tiger, Both Sides Now, and Shine. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Joni Mitchell.

If you're a fan of lyrics from 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1976 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Refuge Of The Roads by Joni Mitchell

The lyrics to Refuge Of The Roads are the words, verses and chorus for the song released by Joni Mitchell in 1976. Elements of the lyrics to Refuge Of The Roads are both direct in meaning and also metaphorical with the real meanings of the song only known by Joni Mitchell and any collaborating writers working on the lyrics for Refuge Of The Roads back when it was created.

Some people have an interest in the etymology behind words and phrases. You can take apart the lyrics to Refuge Of The Roads by Joni Mitchell in a number of ways. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to Refuge Of The Roads" means the words set to the music of Refuge Of The Roads, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Joni Mitchell. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to Refuge Of The Roads and the lyrics to Refuge Of The Roads are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Joni Mitchell who came here looking just for the lyrics to Refuge Of The Roads, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

More Songs & Lyrics by Joni Mitchell

Visit our Joni Mitchell profile for more Joni Mitchell songs, lyrics & info!

)