Lyrics

Several hundred mice overwintered
in that filthy house with the dirt floor cellar,
and four green men barking at the mouth of big woods.
I’m a wash at the edge of the frame
but Errol stands blue
against the sunny nineteenth-century clapboard,
heels dug into himself.

Errol withdrawn into his garret room running in place
for a week straight. Dropping notes through the heating grate.
Bucket full. Soap, please. Vegetables. I need soap!
Redreaming Israel to a house of gentiles:
the scorched red rocks,
the guts in knots.
Alcee and Kane are outside in the dusk
making love on the rope swing,
and Errol’s upstairs, he’s painted his naked skin,
he’s got the video camera rolling,
flashes of b-roll tanks across his chest.

Rudy and Errol on a sunless day
in the crackling woods, stoned,
stone walls describing obsolete borders,
this land too a palimpsest.
The camera’s panicked eye
claws the winter trees
like a sick old cat taken out for one
last walk
to be shot.
Stopping dead on the rooty path,
looking around–
Unbracketed by the wind, Errol sighs.
“Where are we?”

I only mean to say How lovely
to be drawn instead of elbowed
into your groundlessness
when the shadow of a friend goes off ahead.

Personnel

Damon Waitkus – vocals, guzheng, acoustic and baritone electric guitars, hammer dulcimer, flute, percussion
Emily Packard – violin
Jason Hoopes – bass
Jordan Glenn – drums, percussion, vibraphone
Thea Kelley – vocals
Ivor Holloway – tenor saxophone