| No one now knows too much about these woods
|
| They got lost, they wouldn’t know where to go
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| Tribe’s been gone a long time, small farmers got blowed out
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| Maybe there ain’t even that much left to know
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| You can strip the trees, foul the streams, try to hide in a progressive dream
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| Ease into the comfort that kills
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| Before I do that, I’ll grab my pack
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| And disappear with Billy from the hills
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| Blood flows back and back and back and back
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| Like a river from a secret source
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| I feel it wild in me; |
| I pitched my camp
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| At the fork where knowledge meets remorse
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| Women sing in me that song from the ancient fire
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| I just open my mouth and what comes out gives me chills
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| I got my song from a secret place
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| I got my face from Billy from the hills
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| A 40-inch barrel on that shotgun
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| Steel traps in a cane pack on his back
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| Eighteen years old, surrounded by the Ozarks
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| Ain’t one little bit of that boy that’s slack
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| If you’re looking for a helping hand
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| He’ll give you one, you know he will
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| If you’re looking for trouble, huh-uh, turn around
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| You don’t want to mess with Billy from the hills
|
| Some folks dance cool, all angles and swaying hips
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| Sensual as all get out and in
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| Me, I’m a hick, and I dance like one
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| I just kind of jump around and grin
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| I know a guy, he doesn’t dance too much
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| But when he does, he gives everyone a thrill
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| You might run away or suck it up and stay
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| When he dances, Billy from the hills
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| There’s a lantern lit on a Missouri night
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| A woman writing poems by a stove
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| She knows the fox’s whereabouts by knoll, by gulch, by yelp
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| As he runs at night through her mother love
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| Her memory to me is like watercress from a spring-fed stream
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| Fresh and aching as a mockingbird’s trill
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| She lives in me; |
| I try to look until
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| I can see for her and her boy, Billy from the hills
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| It’s a drifting time, people are fascinated by screens
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| No idea what’s on the other side
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| We stare at doom like an uptight groom
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| And live our lives like a drunken bride
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| Tonight I feel something on the wind
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| Deep inside where we have to die or kill
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| Something I know I didn’t know I knew
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| I learned from Billy from the hills |