Out walking in the sub-zero cold
Nose hairs sticking together
**** frost visible on fences
Cheeks, feeling like untreated leather
Snow, crunching, underfoot
Eyes, watering as the wind whips
Ripping my tears from my eyes
And stealing feeling from my fingertips

Twenty minutes and I am numb
My thighs are tight and burning
Wind is howling like a banshee
Hitting full force, so I am learning
My ears are on fire beneath my toque
No snow though, too cold to form
Can't wait to get back home
And let the burning finish before I warm

Through it all, without a care
My dog is leading me around
I'm fully covered, and still I hurt
He's leaving gifts upon the ground
His pads must be frozen
His muzzle is a frozen mask
Finding the perfect spot for one last ***
Seems to be his only task

....all I can say is "I'm freezing, and this ****** owes me!!!"

Sunken sunlight fades, leaking gold,
Dappled shadows cast, dips and dells,
Greenery wrought grey, primeval,
Crisp and still whispers, secrets kept.

Within arching sky, cold tears fall,
Ponderous clouds glow, high above,
Glistening crescent, heralds night,
Chaos of umbra, caught ablaze.

Shimmer scaled sea, cobalt cold,
Encroaching absence, losing bright,
Black ascendancy, the end shade,
Distant lights ignite, dark flowers bloom.

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,--
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,--
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
    Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
    Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
    Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
    Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
    Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
    Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

These blocks are thick

I cannot see through

Tip o' the tongue

Far from the eye



Oh! But then begins
flourishing thoughts
like a...
             like a...
                          like a...

Heartstone is a reflection in music on a ‘lost’ poem. The poem described in its two short verses a summer’s day, a landscape, a fossil found and placed in the palm of a child’s hand. The poem inspired a seven-movement work for wind, brass and percussion with solo piano. Here is its poetic programme note.

Chert

The piano draws an arc of rhythm
rising then falling.
Above
two choirs of wind and brass
exclaim, fanfare, mark out
shorter, determined
gestures of sound.

The procession, almost a march,
becomes a dance.
Alone
Two choirs of wind and brass
become four couples
whose music weaves
from complexity a simplicity:
Chromatic to Pentatonic
twelve becoming five.

Prase

Four stopped horns,
five extended tonalities.
Together they wander
a maze of Pentatonic paths;
alone, and in pairs, as a quartet
they discover within
a measured harmonic rhythm.
Tension: resolution

. . . and surrounding
their every move
the piano
insists an obligato,
a continuum of phrases,
absorbing into itself
the warp and weft of horn tone.

Sard

Oscillating
in perpetual motion
the full ensemble
occupies a frame
of time and space.

Flutes, reeds,
double-reeds
brass, piano,
percussion
mirror-fold on mirror-fold
layer upon layer
overlapping.

Yarns of threaded sound.

Tuff

Without a break
the mirrored oscillations
patter pentatonics
on tuned percussion
of marimba and vibraphone

whilst
a *batterie of drums
lays down
shards of beaten rhythm
against this onward
folding of tonality change.

In the background
a choir of winds
flutes and single reeds
waymark this recursive journey
gathering together
cadential moments and the
necessary pause for breath.

Marl

Relentlessly, the motion is sustained,
piano-driven,
a syncopated continuo,
rhythm-sectioned
amidst layers of percussion.

Adding edge,
a choir of brass and double reeds
amplify the piano’s jagged rhythms
providing impetus for
phrases to become longer and longer,
ratching up the tension,
ever-denying closure
until the batterie
delivers
a conclusive flourish.

Paramoudra

Pulse-figures of winds.
Motific cells of brass.
Both
negotiate a stream of
fractal-shaped tonality
expanding: contracting.
A blossom of fanfares

folding into
pulsating layers
of tuned percussion,
flutes and reeds.
A dance-like episode

absorbs a chorale.
Four horns in close harmony
against the continuing dance.
A duet of differences

flows into a cascade of chords
in closed and open forms.
The piano supports
brass-flourishing figures
before a final stillness.

Heartstone

In gentle reflection
the solitary piano –
a figure in a landscape
of collapsed harmonic forms -
presents in slow procession
the essence of previous music.

I do not claim to know much
Though I'm told each day is a lesson
Yet every hour seems
To layer question upon question
I find it sadly strange
That by a truce I'm worn thin
My heart finds itself confused
With nothing left to win
That night I walked away
One thing I should have said-
You were nothing more
Than a warm body in my bed
Maybe then I wouldn’t
Have to watch your hands entwine
With the silk palms of another
While I stare emptily at mine.

I am a child of the north and south.
I am a son of the east and west.
I am a ghost of the sky and sea
A mirrored reflection of sun and moon.
I am dirt and I am water.
I am nothing and I am everything.