Porch Lights from Sheridan to LaVista

Lyrics

[Intro]
One by one, you come on.

[Verse 1]
Sheridan Road, 1956. A single-story ranch with a carport.
Your light is a sixty-watt bulb in a frosted glass box beside the door.
Just enough to find the keyhole.
LaVista Road, a brick split-level, two windows wide.
Your light is the same.
A quiet promise against the dark.
Someone is home.
Dinner is on.
The day is done.

[Chorus]
And you are the porch light, the silent witness.
You are the Sabbath flame in the aluminum holder, doubled in the windowpane.
You don't say much.
You just say: here.
Here is a family. Here is a door.
Here is a small, warm life against the turning world.

[Verse 2]
I remember one of you.
October, 1968. A Friday evening, five-fifty p.m.
The air smelled of challah and roast chicken.
Your permit, from 1957, specified a pull-chain inside the foyer.
A small, specific detail.
A hand reaching in the dark.
The click of the chain, then the soft yellow bloom on the concrete step.

[Chorus]
And you are the porch light, the silent witness.
You are the Sabbath flame in the aluminum holder, doubled in the windowpane.
You don't say much.
You just say: here.
Here is a family. Here is a door.
Here is a small, warm life against the turning world.

[Bridge]
And who pulled the chain? Whose name isn't on the deed?
Who lit the candles?
Who swept the step?
Who delivered the child who died in 1961, residence listed only as 'Toco Hills'?
You shone for them.
You held the space for their shadow on the lawn.
Your light fell on the hands that built the walls and then drove away, unrecorded.
You hold all the names the plat maps forgot.

[Verse 3]
Now it’s morning. Seven-ten a.m.
You're off.
The dew is on the grass.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is folded on the top step.
A different kind of vigil.
Waiting for the door to open again.
For the day to begin its work.

[Outro]
You, the unlit bulb in the daylight.
Waiting for dusk.
Waiting to say it again.
Here.