Blackburn Park: Green Heartbeat

Lyrics

You wake up slow.
Your forty-nine acres of green lung.
Morning light filters through the Georgia pines.
At first, it’s just the crunch of gravel on the walking trail,
a single runner's breath hanging in the cool air.
You hold the dew on every blade of grass.
You remember when this was just parcels of land,
pieced together back in the sixties and seventies.
A slow, patient idea of peace.

You are the green heartbeat.
The steady rhythm under the noise of Peachtree.
A place to put our feet back on the ground.
A place to just be.
The inhale and the exhale of Brookhaven.

Then the day arrives.
The clean pop from the eighteen courts, a yellow blur against the blue.
Shouts from the multi-use field, a language I don’t know but I understand completely.
Over by the playground, the high arc of a swing, a moment of flight.
A birthday song drifts from a covered pavilion, off-key and perfect.

You are the green heartbeat.
The steady rhythm under the noise of Peachtree.
A place to put our feet back on the ground.
A place to just be.
The inhale and the exhale of Brookhaven.

And when the sun gets low on a Friday evening...
The string lights flicker on.
The air gets thick with grilling onions, sweet kettle corn.
You gather us for movies on the great lawn, our faces lit by the giant screen.
We pass the stone sign, see the name, Judge John Blackburn.
You hold his memory, quiet as the granite it’s carved on.

And then you sleep.
The last car pulls away.
The tennis nets hang loose in the dark.
Just the sound of the wind in the trees.
Your heartbeat...
slows...
but it’s still there.
Always there.