Billy From The Hills - Greg Brown

No one now knows too much about these woods

They got lost, they wouldn’t know where to go

Tribe’s been gone a long time, small farmers got blowed out

Maybe there ain’t even that much left to know

You can strip the trees, foul the streams, try to hide in a progressive dream

Ease into the comfort that kills

Before I do that, I’ll grab my pack

And disappear with Billy from the hills

Blood flows back and back and back and back

Like a river from a secret source

I feel it wild in me;

I pitched my camp

At the fork where knowledge meets remorse

Women sing in me that song from the ancient fire

I just open my mouth and what comes out gives me chills

I got my song from a secret place

I got my face from Billy from the hills

A 40-inch barrel on that shotgun

Steel traps in a cane pack on his back

Eighteen years old, surrounded by the Ozarks

Ain’t one little bit of that boy that’s slack

If you’re looking for a helping hand

He’ll give you one, you know he will

If you’re looking for trouble, huh-uh, turn around

You don’t want to mess with Billy from the hills

Some folks dance cool, all angles and swaying hips

Sensual as all get out and in

Me, I’m a hick, and I dance like one

I just kind of jump around and grin

I know a guy, he doesn’t dance too much

But when he does, he gives everyone a thrill

You might run away or suck it up and stay

When he dances, Billy from the hills

There’s a lantern lit on a Missouri night

A woman writing poems by a stove

She knows the fox’s whereabouts by knoll, by gulch, by yelp

As he runs at night through her mother love

Her memory to me is like watercress from a spring-fed stream

Fresh and aching as a mockingbird’s trill

She lives in me;

I try to look until

I can see for her and her boy, Billy from the hills

It’s a drifting time, people are fascinated by screens

No idea what’s on the other side

We stare at doom like an uptight groom

And live our lives like a drunken bride

Tonight I feel something on the wind

Deep inside where we have to die or kill

Something I know I didn’t know I knew

I learned from Billy from the hills