32. One track

See/Hear/Download: Score(PDF)     MIDI (22 KB)     MP3 (3.8 MB)     Sibelius2018 (72 KB)     MusicXML (860 KB)

Program Notes:
This poem and this song are (metaphorically) about one of the great questions: Do we have free will? Or, are we always guided by those who went before? And what is our influence on those who come after? The setting is a snow-filled, bowl-shaped clearing in a quiet winter wood, and the diction is an open imitation of Robert Frost.

Dedication: To Robert Frost.

Text: Peter Bird, 2017:

ONE TRACK

Across this forest bowl of soft new snow
I’ll ski one track and then be gone
For I have just this day, and miles to go.
Perhaps the line I choose is not my own,
But set by woodland buffalo
And native hunters silent on their trail;
Or milk-cows filing to a barn. No matter.
Down I go. Tomorrow it may be
A highway for the hare, a bar
To foraging field-mouse tunnels; in the thaw
A line of broken straw and mud
Where Bluets’ bloom is late, or slow;
Perhaps in June the Queen Annes lace will show
A stripe, to make a traveler wonder.

Musicians: SATB chorus, sometimes divisi, and piano.

Length: 3:50