Porch Lights from Antique Row to Buford Highway

Lyrics

[Intro]
Seven forty-two in the evening.
The asphalt is still warm from the day.
Night-blooming jasmine somewhere on a fence I can't see.
And the fireflies are just beginning to rise from the creek bed.

[Verse 1]
Down the quiet end of Peachtree Industrial,
the bungalows are turning on their lamps.
One by one.
A yellow bulb behind a screen door on a house from 1928.
A porch swing silent in the blue glow of a television.
These are the old lights.
The ones that remember the sound of the Roswell Railroad 
when it was the only sound.

[Chorus]
And every light is a story.
Every window, a name stamped on the dark.
From the first postmaster's ink
To the last kitchen closing down for the night.
Goodnight, Chamblee.
Goodnight, little lights.

[Verse 2]
Then you turn onto Buford Highway.
And the lights are stacked three stories high.
Long fluorescent strips in apartment kitchens.
Families unpacking groceries.
Korean pears from the H Mart bag.
Pan dulce, still warm, from Plaza Fiesta.
Forty languages saying grace, or scolding a child, or laughing at a joke,
drifting down from the balconies.

[Chorus]
And every light is a story.
Every window, a name stamped on the dark.
From the first postmaster's ink
To the last kitchen closing down for the night.
Goodnight, Chamblee.
Goodnight, little lights.

[Bridge]
That old postmaster, Christian Chamblee,
he only had to stamp one name on the envelopes.
Back in 1885.
Now a thousand new names are stamped in light against the glass.
A thousand homes.
That old Camp Gordon lamppost base, half-buried in the grass,
saw them all arrive.

[Outro]
There goes the last train south.
Just the hum of the transformers now.
And all the little lights.
Goodnight.