Buckhead, O4W, Va-Hi: The Neighbors

Lyrics

Let me tell you who you are.
Not by the names on your own streets,
Peachtree, or Ponce, or Tenth.
But by the names at your edges.
A body is known by the space it holds.
By the family it keeps.

To the south, the glass towers of Downtown
turn their backs and go to work by nine.
The concrete canyons give way, right here,
at the foot of the Fox,
to the first deep breath of green.
You begin where their grid runs out of patience,
where the city decides to live, not just to labor.

You are the heart held in place.
The quiet corridor between.
You are not Buckhead's settled, ancient dust.
You are not Downtown's transactional hum.
You are not the Old Fourth Ward's long, raw memory,
or Virginia-Highland's evening sigh from a porch swing.
You are the space between them all.

To the east, the Tenth Street viaduct
is a bridge over a ghost.
The old rail yards sleep under the asphalt.
The 5:42 freight is a rumor of iron,
a sound that dies on the incline before it reaches your parks.
A story told on the other side of the ridge,
a language you don't have to speak.

You are the heart held in place.
The quiet corridor between.
You are not Buckhead's settled, ancient dust.
You are not Downtown's transactional hum.
You are not the Old Fourth Ward's long, raw memory,
or Virginia-Highland's evening sigh from a porch swing.
You are the space between them all.

And to the north, the Piedmont Driving Club gates.
A polite, iron-clad, final word.
A surveyor's pencil in 1929
drew a line precisely forty-seven feet shy
of a tavern sign they didn't want to claim as their own.
And just east of that, the Highland corner,
where wisteria and hot asphalt rise together on a June evening.
The gentlest border of all.
A shared porch step, a borrowed cup of sugar.

This is the map of your heart.
Drawn by what you are not.
Defined by the neighbors you hold so close.
Buckhead.
Downtown.
Old Fourth Ward.
Virginia-Highland.