I Am A Town - Mary Chapin Carpenter

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

My 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