I Am A Town - Mary Chapin Carpenter

I'm a town in Carolina I'm a detour on a ride

For aphone call and a soda

I'm a blur from the driver's side

I'm the last gas for an hour if you're going twenty-five

I am Texaco and tobacco I am dust you leave behind

I am peaches in September

And corn from a roadside stall

I'm the language of the natives

I'm a cadence and a drawl

I'm the pines behind the graveyard

And the cool beneath their shade

Where the boys have left their beer cans

I am weeds between the graves

My porches sag and lean with

Old black men and children

Their sleep is filled with dreams

I never can fulfill them

I am a town

I am a church beside the highway

Where the ditches never drain

I'm a Baptist like my daddy and Jesus knows my name

I am memory and stillness

I am lonely in old age;

I am not your destination

I am clinging to my ways

I am a town

I'm a town in Carolina

I am billboards in the fields

I'm an old truck up on cinder blocks

Missing all my wheels

I am Pabst Blue Ribbon American

And "Southern Serves the South"

I am tucked behind the Jaycees sign

On the rural route

I am a town

I am a town

I am a town

Southbound