Gingerbread & Gables: Victorian Dreams

Lyrics

Late sun on Edgewood Avenue.
A long, golden slant of light.
You just stand there.
Quiet.
As you have since eighteen-ninety, or was it ninety-one?
The years blur.

Your roofline is such a complicated thought.
A turret reaching for a fairy tale I read once.
Asymmetrical, so the eye can never rest, can never get bored.
Queen Anne, they call this style.
A quiet boast in old-growth cypress and Georgia brick.
You have so many corners, so many deep pockets for the afternoon shadows to live.

And oh, your gingerbread.
All that delicate lacework under the eaves.
Machine-cut spindle work, they tell me.
A perfect, factory-made secret posing as craft.
This was Joel Hurt’s grand vision.
A dream of soaring gables and painted grace, sold by the linear foot, shipped right in on a train.

I trace the lines with my eyes.
The fish-scale shingles on the third floor.
A dragon’s skin, catching the last of the day's fire.
And the transom window, that little jewel.
A shock of cobalt blue and violet glass set above the heavy door.
I imagine the dust motes dancing in that colored light, inside, on an empty hallway floor.
Your porch wraps around like a generous arm, a silent invitation to sit, to listen to the old wood sigh and settle.

And oh, your gingerbread.
All that delicate lacework under the eaves.
Machine-cut spindle work, they tell me.
A perfect, factory-made secret posing as craft.
This was Joel Hurt’s grand vision.
A dream of soaring gables and painted grace, sold by the linear foot, shipped right in on a train.

They built you to last.
To declare a certain kind of arrival.
A new Coca-Cola fortune in a new Atlanta.
I can almost smell the sawdust in the humid air, the fresh pine from a thousand miles away.
You were the future, once.
A brand-new house on a brand-new electric trolley line.

The sun is gone now.
Just your silhouette against the purple sky.
Goodnight, old house.
Goodnight, Euclid Avenue.