Andrew Bird is already among my favorite musicians but "First Song," in particular, has a lofty perch. I grew up in East-Central Illinois where the Earth is as flat as a table top and the dirt is as black as a moonless night. My greatest childhood desire (which actually reached well into my early adult life) was to become a farmer to raise corn and beans and to bring up a family that knows the songs of the birds and bugs and other critters that roam about. To wait anxiously every morning with the kids to see if the deer would stroll through the dewy grass before they scurry off to school. And then sit with them in the back yard as the evening falls and gaze at the stars, watching the final flights of the birds flash by as silhouettes against the orange and now deepening purple sky. To listen to the song of the wind brushing through the leaves of the corn. And on those rainy days after a dry spell, to deeply inhale the aroma, the fragrance of the celebration of the parched dirt reacquainting itself with the falling rain.... Now I wonder what visions will haunt my little boy's heart as he grows up on the Atlantic coast of Virginia. j.enslow, thank you for the lead on Kinnell. I am completely overwhelmed that somebody from Rhode Island could capture my memories and childhood dreams of life in the cornfields of Illinois. I get teary (just a little bit) at the recollected memories whenever I hear this song. But now I know that the person who wrote this offers me so many stories that I will just now begin to discover. From the poetryarchive.org bio of Kinnel: "where he bends over his newly born son: 'and smelled/the black, glistening fur/of his head, as empty space/must have bent over the newborn planet. . .'." I will forever remember these early days of my little boy's life couched in this image.