Terminus: The Crossroads Echo

Lyrics

[Intro]
Before the name…
Before the grid was drawn…
Just this sound.
A point on a map not yet made.

[Verse 1]
Eighteen thirty-seven.
Stephen Harriman Long, with his chains and his eye for the level line.
He saw the end of the Western and Atlantic.
Saw the Georgia red clay, smelled the pine sap in the humid air.
And drove the zero milepost down.
Not a monument.
Just a stake.
An argument with the wilderness.

[Chorus]
And they called you Terminus.
The end of the line, and the beginning of everything.
A heart hammered into the earth.
Where all the steel veins would converge.
Terminus.
A place to arrive, a reason to depart.

[Verse 2]
Then the first few shacks.
The smell of coal smoke and horses.
And a new name, a softer sound.
December, eighteen forty-three.
Wilson Lumpkin gave you his daughter's name.
Martha Atalanta.
Marthasville.
A brief, gentle title for a place built on iron.

[Chorus]
But you were always Terminus.
The end of the line, and the beginning of everything.
A heart hammered into the earth.
Where all the steel veins would converge.
Terminus.
A place to arrive, a reason to depart.

[Bridge]
Then J. Edgar Thomson, a railroad man, he knew.
He heard the echo in the word Atlantic.
Eighteen forty-seven, the last name you'd take.
A feminine form for a masculine trade.
Atlanta.
Born right from the name on the side of the engine.

[Outro]
The stake is gone now.
Buried under the pavement of Underground.
But I feel it.
The pull of that single point.
Still calling everyone home.
Still sending everyone away.