AJC Decatur Book Festival: A Story for Everyone

Lyrics

The air shifts in late August.
A thickness leaves the sky.
The cicadas hold a lower, steadier note.
A waiting.

Then the trucks arrive before the dawn on Friday.
Unfolding white peaks on the courthouse lawn.
A canvas city rising on the grass by the old brick.
It’s Labor Day weekend.
The season turns, and the page turns with it.
A different kind of pilgrim comes to town.
Not for healing, but for hearing.

And here it is.
The great public library, with no walls at all.
The AJC Decatur Book Festival.
A story for the searching, a question for the stall.
A commonwealth of words, free and open to us all.

From the main stage on the Square, a novelist reads a final chapter.
Inside the cool stone quiet of First Baptist, a poet speaks of loss.
The auditoriums at Decatur High School are full to the doors.
Holding a city's shared breath.
And out here, the long, patient lines for a signature in a fresh-cracked book.
A name, a date, a connection made real.

And here it is.
The great public library, with no walls at all.
The AJC Decatur Book Festival.
A story for the searching, a question for the stall.
A commonwealth of words, free and open to us all.

Daren Wang dreamed it into being, a radical and simple thought.
A story belongs to anyone who stops to listen.
It isn't a product to be sold, but a current to be caught.
It flows over the ridge of the great Divide.
A thousand streams of ink and thought, seeking the ocean, seeking the heart.

Sunday evening comes.
The white tents fold.
The stages are just platforms, silent, cold.
But the words are in the air.
In the cars heading home.
We carry the chapters with us.
We are not alone.