21 Cherokee Road NW: Hearth and Horizon

Lyrics

Nineteen hundred and twenty-three.
The air smelled of plaster, and new-cut pine.
I took my first breath.

Mr. Jones turned the first key.
A quiet man with a quiet dream.
Pringle and Smith gave me my bones, my balanced lines.
They taught me how to stand straight against the Georgia sky.
The first fire was laid in my hearth that fall.
A nervous flicker, then a steady glow.
I learned the sound of a family then.
The weight of a footstep on the grand stair.

I am the hearth, you are the flame that comes and goes.
I hold the memories in my walls, the stories nobody knows.
From my gables, I watch the horizon bend and rise.
But the creak of the third step never tells a lie.
Twenty-one Cherokee Road.
I am the anchor, you are the tide.

Then came the others. So many others.
The children who measured their height on the pantry door frame.
The arguments that echoed in the dining room, fading into whispers.
The lovers who met on the landing in the dark.
Every May, the pollen comes. A fine yellow dust on my sills.
A hundred Mays. A hundred coats of yellow dust.
I have worn it like a ritual.
Like a promise that the seasons still turn.

I am the hearth, you are the flame that comes and goes.
I hold the memories in my walls, the stories nobody knows.
From my gables, I watch the horizon bend and rise.
But the creak of the third step never tells a lie.
Twenty-one Cherokee Road.
I am the anchor, you are the tide.

Out there, the horizon was once just trees.
A smudge of city, far away.
Now it is a jaw of steel and glass, chewing on the clouds.
The sound of the road has changed.
From a whisper of tires to a constant hum.
The world rushes past my driveway.
But in here, the dust settles in the afternoon light just the same.

Another night falls.
The house settles. I listen to the quiet breaths in the rooms upstairs.
A new flame flickers in my hearth.
I will hold this story, too.
Until the next tide.