Ponce Ridge: Where Waters Divide

Lyrics

[Intro]
There’s a spine running under the asphalt.
An old high place.
You can’t see it, but you can feel it if you stand still on Ponce.
A faint slope, a breath of higher air.

[Verse 1]
Before the name, before the clang of the streetcar...
there was just the path.
The Mvskoke knew it.
The high ground, where the water sheds clean, left and right.
Pine needles and damp earth.
The surest way from here to there...
was the way the land told you to go.
No map needed.

[Chorus]
And the rain that falls on the north side of the street...
finds its way to the Chattahoochee...
and travels all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
The rain that falls on the south side...
goes to the South River...
and out to the wide Atlantic.
One single line. Two different oceans.

[Verse 2]
Then came the maps.
And a strange Spanish name for a man who never breathed this air.
Juan Ponce de León.
Looking for a fountain, but not here.
They named the bubbling springs for him, then the avenue.
Poured the concrete right over the Mvskoke trail.
Laid the iron tracks along the ridge, because it was still the easiest grade.
The land didn't seem to mind the new name.

[Chorus]
Because the rain that falls on the north side...
still finds its way to the Chattahoochee...
and travels all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
The rain that falls on the south side...
still goes to the South River...
and out to the wide Atlantic.
One single line. Two different oceans.

[Bridge]
So when you’re driving east on Ponce de Leon...
past the market, past the park...
think of the water beneath your wheels.
The quiet decision it’s making.
This ancient divide, this hydrological secret...
holding the whole city on its back.
A watershed in the middle of a crosswalk.

[Outro]
The water always knows.
North... 
or south.
It remembers the ridge.
It always remembers.