Sandy Springs Serenade: Goodnight, Sweet City

Lyrics

The blue is draining from the sky.
Over Roswell Road, the day gives a final sigh.
And one by one... you answer.

There's the first one, a yellow bulb above a door on a post-war ranch.
A warm square thrown across the lawn.
The smell of cut grass and cooling asphalt.
Down the block, another one catches, then another.
This is the quiet hour.
The settling of the city's bones.

And every porch light is a promise kept.
A soft signal in the gathering dark.
Goodnight, sweet city.
Goodnight, Sandy Springs.
This is your serenade, a constellation of small sparks.

I think about the decades... thirty years of folding chairs in stuffy rooms.
The same arguments, the same tired fight.
For this. Just this.
The right to call this quiet your very own.
To draw the line around these lights and say 'we're home'.
It was two thousand and five.
A long time coming.

And every porch light is a promise kept.
A soft signal in the gathering dark.
Goodnight, sweet city.
Goodnight, Sandy Springs.
This is your serenade, a constellation of small sparks.

The 'Hooch keeps its own counsel, running swift and deep.
And the new lights at City Springs, they don't really sleep.
They answer the glow from the ranches.
A different kind of fire.
But they're born of the same story, the same stubborn desire that saved the well-house, that remembers Hammond's pie.
The taste of something real you hold onto, and you don't ask why.

From the river to the county line.
The last car turns for home.
The porch lights hold the watch.
You are not alone.
I'll leave my own light burning.
Goodnight... sweet city.
Goodnight.