691 John Wesley Dobbs Ave NE: Skin and Bone

Lyrics

[Intro]
You wear the sun of a hundred and thirty years.
Just here, on your western face.
This red brick skin,
warmed by another afternoon.

[Verse 1]
Each one laid by a hand I'll never know.
A name lost to the city's churn.
But I can feel the plumb line,
the careful press into wet mortar.
Some are chipped, some worn smooth by the rain
that ran down from the roof in nineteen-twenty.
Or was it eighty-three?
You don't keep a calendar.
You just stand.

[Chorus]
This is the story told in skin and bone.
Red brick and heart pine, holding on.
A silent ledger of the sun and strain,
the freight trains gone, the falling rain.
Just skin and bone.

[Verse 2]
Inside, the light catches on the dust.
It falls across the bones.
These massive timbers, rough-hewn and dark.
They smell of pine, and time, and work.
Down on the lowest level,
if the light is right,
a ghost of a signature.
A knife-carved "J.M." and "189-dash".
A carpenter's boast, or just a prayer.
A moment's claim on something that would outlast him.

[Chorus]
This is the story told in skin and bone.
Red brick and heart pine, holding on.
A silent ledger of the sun and strain,
the freight trains gone, the falling rain.
Just skin and bone.

[Bridge]
And your eyes... these tall industrial windows.
Wavy glass that blurs the new Atlanta.
They weren't made for views, but for the light.
To find the imperfections in a bale of cotton,
to see the fine white powder of the flour.
They let the work come in.
They let the dust of it settle.
And your feet... your feet of concrete and stone,
planted so cleverly on either side of the iron road.
Letting the whole world rumble right underneath you.

[Outro]
Yeah, the world rumbled right underneath you.
And you never flinched.
Not once.
J.M... wherever you are.
We see the work.
We see the bones.