This origin of this song is a lucid dream I had many years ago. 

At the time, I was going to college in Philadelphia and I started to explore metaphysical topics.  I experimented with meditation and I started keeping a dream journal.  All of my “self” work culminated with my first lucid dream experience.  As I delved deeper into lucid dreaming, my experiences became more intense and wonderful.  All my time and effort lead to this one amazingly vivid flying dream.

In this particular dream, I flew over different landscapes.  At first I was floating over center city Philadelphia. Then suddenly, the scene shifted and I found myself flying over some back country roads. It was nighttime and although I could not tell exactly where I was, there was something strangely familiar about the place. Eventually I found myself floating over a small white car parked in an empty lot.  I couldn’t see inside the car, but for some reason, I knew there was something happening there. The image stayed in my head and haunted me, which eventually compelled me to imagine many different scenarios. The story I tell in “In the Parking Lot” is the scenario that stuck. 

In the Parking Lot

In the parking lot
on a wintry night
her smoke signal breath
billows clouds of delight
 
Slowly the window fog
except her footprints on the windshield
in the parking lot

It ain’t much
but it’s all that she’s got
some fleeting moments
in the parking lot