Piedmont Park: The City's Backyard

Lyrics

The air tastes like October.
Wet oak leaves on the asphalt.

Two hundred acres of breath between 10th Street and Monroe.
It's just after dawn.
Over there, by the dog run, the sound of leashes clicking open.
A kind of freedom.
Sixty-eight degrees on the grass.

This is the city's backyard.
This is our lawn.
Where we learn each other's dogs' names before we learn our own.
Our green heart, beating slow in the morning.

This lake wasn't always here.
They dug it out for the future, back in 1895.
Named it Clara Meer.
And someone told me the bottom is lined with old cotton bales from the Exposition.
A soft floor for a city's memory.
We walk on water that remembers cotton.

This is the city's backyard.
This is our lawn.
Where we learn each other's dogs' names before we learn our own.
Our green heart, beating slow in the morning.

Soon the market tents will go up.
The smell of kettle corn will drift from the meadow.
The stage where Music Midtown will scream in September is just a quiet hill today.
We hold all the versions of this place at once.
The festival roar and the morning quiet.

This is the city's backyard.
This is our lawn.
Where we learn each other's dogs' names before we learn our own.
Our green heart, beating steady now.

The sun is on the water.
The skyline is just waking up over the trees.
One foot in front of the other.
On the path.
In our yard.