Cabbage Smell: The Name on the Wind

Lyrics

[Intro]
The five o'clock whistle sighs.
A quiet settles on the shotgun rows.
And then… you begin.

[Verse 1]
A hundred kitchens, window to wall.
A hundred cast iron pots, standing heavy and tall.
On a hundred wood-burning stoves, a low, steady heat.
A woman's hands, tired from the day's defeat,
Tearing your pale green leaves.
Just water, maybe some salt pork, and you.
That's all it was.

[Chorus]
Oh, you sharp and humble ghost.
Rising in the steam, clinging to the porch posts.
You're not a flower, you're not a pine.
You are the honest smell of getting by.
The name they gave us, carried on the wind.
Cabbagetown. Again and again.

[Verse 2]
You drift down Wylie Street, thick and slow.
Mixing with the coal smoke and the Georgia evening glow.
A signal that the shift is done.
That supper's on for everyone.
A common cloud, we all breathed you in.
Our poor man's perfume, our kith and kin.
You told the world who we were.

[Chorus]
Oh, you sharp and humble ghost.
Rising in the steam, clinging to the porch posts.
You're not a flower, you're not a pine.
You are the honest smell of getting by.
The name they gave us, carried on the wind.
Cabbagetown. Again and again.

[Bridge]
Now the mill is quiet, the stoves are cold.
New people live here, a new story's told.
They plant basil in their window boxes.
They don't know the secret that the evening unlocks.
But sometimes, on a humid night after a rain,
I swear I catch your memory, a sweet and earthy pain.
A story that the air still holds.

[Outro]
Just a whisper… Cabbagetown.
The name on the wind.
Our name.