DeKalb County: The Chosen Seat

Lyrics

December ninth.
Eighteen twenty-two.
The air in Milledgeville is cold on the glass.
A rustle of parchment.

A piece of Henry, a slice of Gwinnett.
A corner taken from Fayette.
Stitched together with a new name.
DeKalb.
And in the center of this new paper quilt, a single point is marked.
A chosen seat.
A place for a courthouse not yet built.
A place for a story to begin.

It was just a line, at first.
Just ink bleeding into the fibers of a map.
A surveyor's dream, a legislator's breath.
But a line has weight.
A line has a sharp edge.
It decides who is in, and what is out.
The first, thin, quiet line.

It could have been Adairsville.
A nod to a man with a claim.
It might have been Swanton.
A name whispered in a hall, then lost.
But the pen stroke settled elsewhere.
On a hero who never saw this red clay.
Never breathed this humid air.
A ghost to stand guard at the new gate.

It was just a line, at first.
Just ink bleeding into the fibers of a map.
A surveyor's dream, a legislator's breath.
But a line has weight.
A line has a sharp edge.
It decides who is in, and what is out.
The first, thin, quiet line.

And what of the paths that were already here?
The trails worn smooth by other feet.
The names for the creek that the map doesn't speak.
The line is drawn over them.
A clean, straight, unremembering mark.
It pretends the page was empty.
It pretends the clay was silent.

From ink to iron stake.
From stake to furrowed field.
From field to foundation stone.
The line gets harder to erase.
December ninth.
The scratch of the pen.
It never stops echoing.