Paula Boggs Band - Ebony Revisited

Ebony Revisited
By Paula Boggs

Verse 1

It’s 6 am again; I get up for a run
Through humid environs street life’s barely begun.
No one’s hanging out on corners or boozing on their porch
‘Cept Uncle John with his moonshine and patent pending torch.

I pass McKinley High School and Piney Branch Hill.
Heading t’wards the people’s Park
Powered by adrenaline.
A runner scuttles by me.
Again a bike or two.
As I cross Devil’s Footbridge,
Beneath me smells of dew.

Bridge

Yes I was born here but that don’t make it home.
1-202 ain’t local on my cell phone.

Chorus

It’s not my home
I’m just a stranger passing through.
It’s not my home
Though I love how you do you.
Maybe someday I’ll return.
Pay you back for all I learned.
It’s Ebony Revisited
But Lord it’s not my home.

Verse 2
My mama and her kinfolk came by colored-only bus.
My daddy got here later; invited by a campus.
Some call it Chocolate City; other’s say it’s woke
But just like John Sayles’ “Brother” I don’t always get the joke.
You see my family left here when I was four years old.
By seven my grandparents were resting under tombstones.
Soon enough thereafter we moved to distant shores.
It’s sho’ hard to know your birthplace from an alien port.

Bridge Chorus