Frank Lebby Stanton: Ballads of DeKalb

Lyrics

[Intro]The rocking chair is empty now.1140 Artwood Road.The honeysuckle is heavy tonight.May 31st, 1927.Just the creak of the wood on the porch boards.[Verse 1]You came here in '89, left the salt air of CharlestonFor this red Georgia clay, for the rumble of a city growing.Clark Howell saw the heart in your lines.He gave you a desk at the Constitution, a deadline every single morning.Downstairs, the presses shook the floorboards.Upstairs, the quiet scratch of your pen on paper.The smell of ink and hot lead type, a space to fill before the evening edition.A column for the Just Plain Folks.[Chorus]And you wrote, "This world that we're a-livin' in...""...is mighty hard to beat.""You get a thorn with every rose...""...but ain't the roses sweet?"[Verse 2]From this porch, you watched Decatur breathe.Watched the last farms give way to picket fences.The dirt roads of DeKalb learning to be streets, the streetcar ringing its bell.You saw the milk wagon on its route, the laundry on the line,The dust motes dancing in the afternoon sun.You heard the small talk over a garden wall, the laughter from a window.You put it all down on fragile paper.A ballad for the grocer, a verse for the sudden summer rain.A simple truth for a complicated time.[Chorus]"This world that we're a-livin' in...""...is mighty hard to beat.""You get a thorn with every rose...""...but ain't the roses sweet?"[Bridge]Thirty years. Over ten thousand mornings.Not a day missed.Finding the right word before the sun climbed too high.They clipped your columns from the paper, folded them into wallets.Read them aloud at the dinner table.Then, in 1925, they made it official.Poet Laureate.As if the people hadn't already known for decades.As if your name wasn't already writtenon a thousand scraps of newsprint,tucked inside a thousand worn-out Bibles.[Outro]The chair is still.The ink is dry.But the question hangs here in the humid Georgia air.Ain't the roses sweet?