Francis Palmer Smith: The Craftsman's Touch

Lyrics

Your hand. Francis.
Just your hand and the light from the window.

A clean sheet of vellum, nineteen twenty-three.
The brief says H. Gordon Jones.
But the conversation is with the T-square.
The quiet slide of metal on wood.
A line for the portico.
Another for the gable.
Perfect, parallel worlds.

And that's the touch.
The craftsman's touch.
Not a line too much.
A balance held in the quiet of the room.
Francis Palmer Smith, your shadow on the blueprint.
A colonial revival dream, made for this new ground.

Three hundred houses sleeping in your mind.
Pringle takes the call, you draw the line.
Teaching the boys at Georgia Tech the weight of a door, the grace of a stair.
You're building a memory of a place that was never quite here.
Symmetrical, solid, sure.

And that's the touch.
The craftsman's touch.
Not a line too much.
A balance held in the quiet of the room.
Francis Palmer Smith, your shadow on the blueprint.
A colonial revival dream, made for this new ground.

Your wife said the pencil never left your hand.
A sketch on a napkin at dinner.
The curve of a banister in the margin of a paper.
The house is always being built.
Always.
Behind your eyes.

The lines are mortar now.
The graphite is brick.
Twenty-one Cherokee Road breathes in the Atlanta heat.
Your touch is in the coolness of the hall.
Francis.
It's still here.