Beyond the Square: Neighbors in Motion

Lyrics

The map in my head isn't bordered in ink.
It's a feeling, a scent, a way that I think.
It starts at the square, then it wanders from there...

Down College Avenue, the bungalows breathe.
Suddenly the street signs say Oakhurst, a quiet reprieve.
It's our other downtown, with its own gentle beat.
The sound of a festival spilling out on the street.
A porch swing is creaking a slow afternoon.

Then west over the tracks, where the past isn't gone.
I can almost hear the metallic clang of the streetcar at dawn.
Hello, Kirkwood, with your new coat of paint.
On bones from the eighteen-nineties, a patient old saint.
Your story and our story, they rhyme and they bend.

The lines on the map are just polite suggestions.
A pencil sketch somebody drew.
But the roots of the oaks and the flow of the traffic...
They know a story that's wider and true.
Beyond the square, the neighbors are in motion.
A single fabric, a shared-out view.

Now north, into Druid Hills, the road starts to curve.
That's Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., preserving a nerve
of green through the city, a park you can live in.
The smell of azaleas, a gift freely given.
A grand, quiet chapter in the book of this place.

Then east, into a dream from nineteen twenty-four.
George Willis wanted Stratford-upon-Avon next door.
Avondale Estates, with its steep Tudor gables.
A storybook city from newspaper fables.
Standing right there by its own little lake.

Willis had a plan and Joel Hurt had a vision.
But we cross their invisible lines with no decision.
For a coffee, for a school, for a friend down the way.
The addresses change, but not the shape of the day.
The history isn't separate, it's woven and spun.

The lines on the map are just polite suggestions.
A pencil sketch somebody drew.
But the roots of the oaks and the flow of the traffic...
They know a story that's wider and true.
Beyond the square, the neighbors are in motion.
A single fabric, a shared-out view.

A shared-out view...
From Kirkwood to Avondale...
From Oakhurst to Druid Hills...
All neighbors... in motion...