Eastern Ridge: Edgewood's Piedmont Perch

Lyrics

[Intro]
The air is different up here.
Just a little.
You can feel it if you pay attention.

[Verse 1]
Before the city had a name, before Terminus was a stake in the ground.
There was just this spine of red clay.
This gentle rise in the Piedmont.
A watershed.
Where every drop of summer rain had to decide.
West to the Chattahoochee, or east from here.
Always east.
Towards the Ocmulgee, on its long, slow walk to the ocean.

[Chorus]
This is the Eastern Ridge.
Our quiet perch.
It’s not a mountain, not a cliff.
Just the high ground.
The reason for the slant of the floor in the old houses on Whitefoord Avenue.
The reason the water runs the way it does toward the tracks.

[Verse 2]
And the developers felt it.
Men who measured the world in plats and prospects.
They knew the value of a breeze on an August afternoon.
They smelled the pine needles give way to the scent of fresh-cut lumber.
They laid the streetcar iron right along the crest.
Following the easiest grade.
And sold the lots with the quiet promise of a view.

[Chorus]
This is the Eastern Ridge.
Our quiet perch.
It’s not a mountain, not a cliff.
Just the high ground.
The reason for the slant of the floor in the old houses on Whitefoord Avenue.
The reason the water runs the way it does toward the tracks.

[Bridge]
We pave it over.
We build our square foundations on its patient slope.
But the ridge holds us.
It remembers the weight of the oaks before the weight of the bungalows.
It still feels the pull of the Atlantic in its bones.
Every storm drain, every gutter is a memory of that first decision.

[Outro]
Stand on your porch tonight.
Close your eyes.
You can feel it under your feet.
The long, slow tilt of the land.
The whole neighborhood breathing.
On its Piedmont perch.
Leaning, just slightly, toward the morning sun.