Sure, Shambles. Give you a hand up?
Here are some other things I know about Sara. Do any of them add to the song? She had silver blond hair and blue eyes, she was shy and small underweight and clingy, what psychologists call 'failure to thrive'. The pictures were snaps from the Easter picnic at our house two weeks before. It was that first warm spring sunshine and the kids were running in the sprinkler, but we had to take turns carrying Sara, she wouldn't be parted from the people holding her. There is one picture of her, in the sun by herself and the wood porch in shadow behind her, that I always see when I sing that verse. She was 3 days short of two when she died.
I like Sydney Carter's Silver in the Stubble, but I would never sing it, it isn't my voice. Sometimes you can sing, or even write something from the perspective of a member of the opposite sex, but it still has to fit you.
One of my pagan friends says a singing a song well is the same as raising power with a spell or casting a glamour.
To me that means becoming what I sing, and showing it to the people listening. Telling the story, not performing. A kind of egoless place. Does that make sense?
Blessings,
Barbara