The Court of the Lone White Pine —2004

Commissioned by The Kennett Symphony Children’s Chorus, The Court of the Lone White Pine is a setting of a poem by Harriet Taylor.

Text

You wear your breezes well, White Pine!
Steadfast green resurrection
Needled robe playing sunlight
You hold court at the thought of snow
Sweet talking the sting out of winter winds
That snatch my breath away

The deciduous courtiers around you
Shorn for winter’s wait, a leafless throng
Praying to November’s blue
In naked arterial lines straining to connect
Shaking with the wind while you dance in it
Extravagant playful spirit

Did you come on the wind to stay?
To make magic out of the proud exhausted ground?
To dream balance this long winter’s night?

Beneficent monarch of cold and sleeping fields
You are the flag of hope for life again
Recalling the unseen thread that moves through
Me and you and the rabbit who shelters beneath
Pulling us all together in the great weaving of
The ten thousand things that bother themselves to live.

Harriet Taylor