Odes to Lake Claire · Track 1 · opener
Lake Claire: The Land Trust and the Lake
Lake Claire — the eastside Atlanta neighborhood north of Kirkwood and Candler Park. The Lake Claire Land Trust (a co-op community space with peacocks, communal garden, drumming circle Saturdays), the namesake former lake (now drained), the community pool, the Lake Claire Halloween parade, the bungalow-craftsman housing, the laid-back hippie-meets-Atlanta vibe.
Lyrics
[Intro] Oh, old lake, drained away in nineteen-ten, I whisper to your ghost under these oaks. [Verse 1] You were Claire's Pond once, marked on that map from nineteen-oh-six, near McLendon Avenue and Lakeshore Drive, where the ground still squelches after rain. I walk there now, addressing you like a lost lover, your marshy scent rising at midday. Children played here before the bungalows rose, their names forgotten in the city records, local youths, they called them, splashing in your shallows on summer afternoons. But you were drained for houses, for progress, leaving this low spot that floods in storms. [Chorus] Yet from your absence, we built the Trust, Naomi Henderson signing the charter in nineteen-eighty-five, at two-seventy Arizona Avenue NE, one point two acres saved for us. Peacocks strut there now, Bowie perching on his oak branch, conducting the Saturday drums at dusk. Joni calls back, her cry piercing the cooling air, sixty-five degrees as the djembes thump. This is our gathering, love, in the space you left. [Verse 2] The pool at four-twenty Claire Drive carries your memory, chlorine sharp in the humid June heat, eighty degrees in the water, families laughing from ten AM, bare feet on cracked concrete. I dip my hand in, speaking to you through the ripples, remembering how you held us once. And the parade, Richard Martin in his wizard robe, leading since the early two-thousands, bicycles with streamers crunching leaves on Lakeshore, candy apples sticky at seven PM, fifty-five degrees biting through costumes, the rustle of capes in twilight. [Bridge] What gaps remain? The early caretakers, that crew from the eighties, their hands clearing paths, names lost like the children who knew your banks before the drain. The exact day they took you away, unnamed engineer in nineteen-ten reports, but we fill it with gardens, raised beds marked 'Pea-ceful Patch' in fading blue. Rusty wheelbarrows lean by the shed, hauling mulch, growing collards for potlucks. Small strange fact: Bowie the peacock, feathers catching light, as if he remembers you too. [Outro] Oh, lake, in your dryness we found our wet earth, our community blooming. Laid-back, hippie and Atlanta mixed, under golden leaves. We gather, we drum, we parade— for you, always.