Deerfoot

Lyrics

There's a road. Cuts past the reservoir.
Just a line of asphalt and pine.
Deerfoot Road.
Most folks don't think twice about the sign.

But a name has roots.
This one grew in Seneca soil, near Cattaraugus.
Louis Bennett.
Heard he was born in 1828.
He ran.
Not for sport, not at first.
Then for money.
Then for the sheer noise of it.

How does a man running in moccasins through London mud
End up a name on a green sign in a quiet wood?
How does the roar of twenty thousand English throats
Settle into the rustle of oak leaves and forgotten notes?
Deerfoot.
A flicker of motion.
A name set in stone.

February Eleventh. Eighteen Sixty-Two.
Garratt Lane Grounds. A damp chill cutting through.
Andrew Hall, The Flying Scotchman, they called him.
Waited at the line.
And Louis, in his feathers and breechclout,
Said, "I can run against any man in the world."
And then he proved it. Ten miles of it.

How does a man running in moccasins through London mud
End up a name on a green sign in a quiet wood?
How does the roar of twenty thousand English throats
Settle into the rustle of oak leaves and forgotten notes?
Deerfoot.
A flash of a legend.
A name we call home.

There's no record in the town hall.
No minutes from a meeting explaining it all.
Someone just… remembered.
Someone saw the papers, heard the tale,
and thought that kind of speed, that kind of fire,
deserved a place here.
A ghost of motion on a settled map.
A wild name for a quiet path.

He went home, they say. Became a farmer.
The fame settled back into the earth.
And here, the cars drive down Deerfoot Road.
The asphalt is quiet.
The pines whisper.
And the name just runs.
And runs.