I Am a Town (PCM Stereo)

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 ****s 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