I Am A Town

　　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.