a.ToWN

I’m a town in Carolina, I’m a detour on a ride
For a phone 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’m 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, southbound

so brilliantly written by Mary Chapin Carpenter