Allen Temple AME: The Choir Loft

Lyrics

You can feel it before you hear it.
The quiet in this room is not empty.
It is full.
Full of the breath held before the first note.

Up there. The loft.
Carved from Georgia pine in 1908.
The railing worn smooth by a century of hands.
Mrs. Elara's hands, conducting the children's choir in 1952.
Deacon Miles's hand, gripping tight during his own daughter's eulogy.
You can still see where a boy named Samuel scratched his initials, S.J., 1961.
Just below the stand for the soprano soloist.
That worn spot in the floorboards.
That's where she always stood.

This is not just wood. Not just a balcony.
This is the ark that holds the sound.
Every wedding high note, every funeral's low moan.
Every Easter morning hallelujah.
It is all held here. In the grain of the wood.
It remembers every voice.

I remember the service for the Washington brothers, lost in 1944.
The women up there, they sang 'Steal Away' so soft...
It felt like they could pull those boys right back from the sky.
And I remember Sarah Jenkins getting married, May 1986.
Sunlight pouring through the Good Shepherd window.
The choir sang 'His Eye Is On The Sparrow'.
And from that loft, it felt like the whole world was a promise.

This is not just wood. Not just a balcony.
This is the ark that holds the sound.
Every wedding high note, every funeral's low moan.
Every Easter morning hallelujah.
It is all held here. In the grain of the wood.
It remembers every voice.

And now... now new voices fill that space.
Young voices. They don't know the names.
They don't know the ghosts they're singing with.
But they stand on the same worn floorboards.
They breathe the same resonant air.
And the sound they make... joins the sound that was.
An unbroken chord across the years.

The service ends. The people go home.
But the song... the song stays.
It settles back into the pine.
Waiting.
Always waiting.