Lyrics

[Intro] Counting Birds by Jim Harrison [Verse] As a child, fresh out of the hospital with tape covering the left side of my face, I began to count birds At age fifty, the sum total is precise and astonishing, my only secret Some men count women or cars they've owned, their shirts, long sleeved and short sleeved, or shoes, but I have my birds Excluding, of course, the extraordinary days The twenty-one thousand snow geese and sandhill cranes at Bosque del Apache The sky blinded by great frigate birds in the Pacific off Anconcito, Ecuador The twenty-one thousand pink flamingos in Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania The vast flocks of sea birds of the Seri coast of the Sea of Cortez down in Sonora that left at nightfall, then reappearing, resuming their exact positions at dawn One thousand cliff swallows nesting in the sand cliffs of Pyramid Point Their small round burrows like eyes, really the souls of the Anasazi who flew here a thousand years ago to wait the coming of Manitou And then there were the usual, almost deadly birds of the soul The crow with silver harness I rode one night as if she were a black, feathered angel The birds I became to escape unfortunate circumstances How the skin ached as feathers shot out toward the light The thousand birds the dogs helped me shoot to become a bird Grouse, woodcock, duck, dove, snipe, pheasant, prairie chicken, et cetera On my deathbed, I'll write a secret number on a slip of paper and pass it to my wife and two daughters It will be a hot evening in June and they might be glancing out the window at the thunderstorm's approach from the west Looking past their eyes and a dead fly on the window screen, I'll wonder if there's a bird waiting for me in the onrushing clouds Oh, birds, I'll sing to myself You've carried me along this bloody voyage Carry me now to that cloud into the marvel of this final night