I’ve been reading Bob Dylan’s autobiography ‘Chronicles’ and as I was reading it I found 5 Argentinian Pesos in it which I’ve been using as a bookmark and which felt very fitting for a Dylan book. I wrote this song inspired by a mix of the book and the 5 Peso note!

There’s a hurricane howling off on the horizon
Building like a brass band’s roar
The change in the weather’s no longer surprising
Cos nothing stays the same any more
and I’m sitting here waiting and watching and writing
and wondering when it’s time to go
The lights are flickering and faltering and fading
like fireflies after the show

There’s a train that’s thundering off in the distance
Heading for who knows where
I had my chances and I know that I missed them
They could have taken me there
Now I’m stuck in the dirt and the dust of the desert
and I’m drowning in my dreams
But something inside is still there saying
“it isn’t all that it seems”

So I pick up my pack and I grab my guitar
And I set out towards the sun
Don’t know where I’m heading but I know that it’s far
Away from where I’ve begun
With five pesos I pull from my pocket that I found
in the back of a borrowed book
I buy my ticket, can I also buy forgiveness
for all those mistakes that I took

So I’m out on the road now, this is my life
I’m nothing but a travelling man
I don’t have a home or a gun or a knife
Just a guitar and an unravelling plan
I’m a no-one, a nothing, I never was here,
and here’s where I’ll forever be
I’ve slipped through the cracks of the railroad tracks
and I find that I’m finally free, finally I’m free

(c) Rich Clarkson 2025

Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash