speaking of which...

so the last post was rather exclusive. sorry about that, o faithful readers. once upon a time, a friend sent me a snippet of joanna newsom's lyrics. they were beautiful, and i wanted them to have been mine - meanwhile, roommates laughed at them, killing the mood. they might not have laughed had it not seemed exclusive. most of you probably won't like her music (i've found maybe two people who do), but apart from that, she's a poet. here's from my second favorite song in all of creation - second only to sufjan's 'seven swans'. it's called 'only skin', and this is just a small fraction of the nearly fifteen-minute whole:

Last week, our picture window
Produced a half-word,
Heavy and hollow,
Hit by a brown bird.

We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
And pant and labor over every intake.

I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace,
Then thought i ought to take her to a higher place.
Said, “dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you,
And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view.”

Then in my hot hand, she slumped her sick weight.
We tramped through the poison oak, heartbroke and inchoate.
The dogs were snapping, so you cuffed their collars
While i climbed the tree-house. Then how i hollered!

Cause she’d lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two;
Then saw the treetops, cocked her head, and up and flew.
(while back in the world that moves, often, according to
The hoarding of these clues,
Dogs still run roughly around
Little tufts of finch-down.)

The cities we passed were a flickering wasteland,
But his hand, in my hand, made them hale and harmless.

While down in the lowlands, the crops are all coming;
We have everything.

Life is thundering blissful towards death

In a stampede
Of his fumbling green gentleness.