Eastern Ridge: Edgewood's Piedmont Perch

Lyrics

You were here first.
Before the name. Before the iron.
Just the slow breathing of the red clay.

Millions of years pressing down.
Lifting up.
The Piedmont rolling like a sleeping back.
You held the memory of water...
where it wanted to run.
West, always west.
You smelled of damp earth and pine needles
before there was anyone here to smell it.

And you gave us this...
this gentle fall.
This Piedmont Perch.
Just enough of a tilt to see what was coming.
A city of glass and steel dreaming itself into the sunset.
Our Eastern Ridge, watching it all.

Then the men came.
With their tripods and their numbers.
Joel Hurt thought he was drawing new lines...
but he was just tracing the ones you'd already made.
The streetcars groaned up your incline,
Edgewood Avenue following your spine.
You told them where to go.

And you gave us this...
this gentle fall.
This Piedmont Perch.
Just enough of a tilt to see what was coming.
A city of glass and steel dreaming itself into the sunset.
Our Eastern Ridge, watching it all.

Now, on a clear evening, after the rain has washed the air clean...
we stand on our porches.
We feel it.
That same patient slope beneath our feet.
And we look west, and see the towers catch the last light.
The same view you've always offered.

Watching it all.
Still watching.
The long slope home.
The long slope west.