Adam Cole: Music

Crossing Over (the 17th Street Bridge)

Words and Music, Adam Cole

When I saw them building the 17th Street Bridge, connecting the long-neglected West Side to the Midtown Corridor, I got a strong sense of hope for my city and myself.

Crossing Over (The Seventeenth Street Bridge)

You can't see much here from far away
All the walls of Atlanta seems to get in the way
But you can see the bridge as you cruise to the north
with your eyes on the sky and your wheels on the earth

I grew up in a different kind of South
With its head in a hole and its hand in its mouth
And I'd like to believe that it wasn't that bad
How we'd already lost what we never had

And there's hope in steel for the very first time
Cause they built us a treasure out of nickel and dime
And it spans the horrible jam stretching out like an arm from I was to I am
I'm crossing over the Seventeenth Street bridge!

Folks from different places don't know what we're about
If you try to explain you'll never straighten them out
How the black and the white and the yellow and brown
never see each other in the very same town.

You can call me a cynic if you hear me at all
And I'd take a bow as I took that fall
From my perch in anonymity
to the disparate voices you can hear in the city

But there's hope in steel…etc.

Now the splintered remnants of this vanished railroad town
Are joined together once again
Now the ghosts that have burned our city down
Will sing together like old friends upon the Seventeenth Street Bridge!