"Plural as the Universe" by Susan Rich
I've spent most of the day trying to think of a Taylor song that discusses birds, but "The Albatross" is the only obvious one. I have a gut feeling that I'm forgetting something, but hopefully, through reviewing all these lyrics and poems, inspiration may strike later on down the road.
In a literal sense, I was thinking "Bigger Than the Whole Sky" might be a fit, since the narrator in the poem is reflecting on what would happen if they were born a bird. The poem's title and a line late in the poem mention universes, which are bigger than the whole sky. I think both the poem and the song discuss the possibility of "what could have been," so it could be a fit. But the song's narrator is focusing on the existence of another person, while the poem's narrator is focusing on herself.
The line in the poem "No longer criticized for how high I fly" was itching my brain because I know I've heard it somewhere or something very close to it, but I couldn't think of where. So, I did that magical thing where I stopped thinking about it, and it finally came to me - "Nothing New". The lyrics "criticize the way you fly / when you're soaring through the sky,'" sound quite familiar, no? I also think the element of time in the song ("It's like I can feel time moving") might match up with the "plural new universes" in the poem. But...I'm not convinced.
After reading through several times, I think my final answer is "seven." The lines in the song, "Please picture me / in the trees," and "I was high / in the sky / with Pennsylvania under me," parallel with the poem's subject of the possibility of being born a bird. The poem's line, "elevate herstory with a scream" comes toward the end of the poem, similar to the line in the song, "Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously." And finally, the parallel of "universe" in the poem and the line "love you to the moon and to Saturn," in the song fit nicely.
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