32. One track

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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

[wood buffalo]

curious Wood Buffalo

Ansgar Walk, 1998-July-02

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[snowshoe hare]

snowshoe hare

Tim Rains, 31 July 2011

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[Bluets]

Tiny Bluets (Houstonia sp.)

Karen Burch (Gardener2005), 15 May 2010

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[Queen Anne's lace]

white Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota?) with yellow tansy

Ron Clausen, 2017

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[soft new snow]

snowy forest in Boreal, California

Brocken Inaglory

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[forest bowl]

snowy forest shadows

Patrick Hendry, 2017-03-09

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[one track]

Schwarzwald-im-schnee

Faldrian, 15 January 2017

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Fresh Choral Music Online, by Peter Bird of Los Angeles