Piedmont Park: The City's Green Lung

Lyrics

The first step in.
And the air changes.
A deep pull of green.
An exhale of steel.

The asphalt gives way to worn-down dirt paths.
Curved just so. The Olmsted hand, I suppose.
Guiding your feet away from the grid.
My pace slows without my permission.
The hum of the city, a low chord held
just beyond the treeline.
Here, the only deadlines are the sun's.
The only meetings are strangers' dogs
tangled in leashes by the dog park fence.

Oh, Piedmont.
You are the city's quiet, steady lung.
Breathing in the exhaust, the hurry, the noise.
Breathing out the scent of magnolia and damp earth.
A shared space for a thousand private moments
around the slow, dark water of Lake Clara Meer.

I walk by the Stone Bridge,
thinking of the quarry this used to be.
Blasted rock, now holding water still enough to reflect the sky.
I can almost hear the ghost of a horse race,
the echo of the Gentleman's Driving Park from 1887.
Or the murmur of a crowd in 1895,
listening to Booker T. Washington
promise a different kind of future
on these same grounds.

Oh, Piedmont.
You are the city's quiet, steady lung.
Breathing in the ambition, the history, the scars.
Breathing out the scent of magnolia and damp earth.
A shared space for a thousand private moments
around the slow, dark water of Lake Clara Meer.

And who were the men who moved the earth?
Whose names are not on any plaque?
Their sweat is in this soil.
Their labor holds the water in the lake.
I watch the runners on the Active Oval,
a steady, rhythmic pulse.
Each one breathing with you.
Each footfall a quiet thank you
for this impossible green,
this arboreal embrace in a city of iron.

The first streetlights flicker through the leaves.
A signal to turn back.
Another deep pull of green.
For the walk home.
The lung exhales.