Music Among Friends

The point is not to take the world’s opinion as a guiding star, but to go one’s way in life and work unflinchingly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.
— Gustav Mahler

A soprano friend via Triad, Janet Ross, was looking for pieces for soprano and flute, so I offered to write one.  Keeping my friend Peter Bloom in mind, I thought I wanted to write for soprano and alto flute, and I asked yet another friend, Leo Schulte if he had a likely poem;  well, he wrote one:

Thus moaned the soil:

My life, my life, my life,

A mass of desire

In a priestless church,

A smile of despair

In a cloud-choked face,

A gasp of adieu

In an unknelled box.   

Thus cried the fire:

My life, my life, my life,

Growing and thinking and warming,

Gilded and hated,

Warming and yearning and fading,

Useful and useless,

Fading and yearning and fading,

With a yearning heart.

Thus sighed the air:

My life, my life, my life,

A wave in a sea

With a too-far shore,

A clock in a world

With a time-free sky,

A grain in a dune

With a boundless mind.

Thus sang the sea:

My life, my life, my life,

Dreaming and birthing and storming,

Frozen and cobbled,

Storming and healing and playing,

Lovelorn and Love-filled,

Playing and healing and playing,

In the healing soul.