Classical Music | Choral Music

Recorded on 06/21/2017, uploaded on 05/04/2018

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Alaska Spring by Libby Larsen (b. 1950)
  
I.  April
II.  Extending the Range
III.  Fiddlehead
IV.  Juncos
V.  Walking the Marsh

April

Another almost snow-
less winter, the stunned
earth unable to shed
its skin, when
a hushed sound
wakes you from
your restless sleep,
the first warm wind
of the new year,
frost rising
from the ground
lifting its coffin
as it goes, leaving its seed
in the iris, so
this is what it means
to be holy, so
this is what it means
to be saved.

Extending the Range

The ravens have departed taking hooded
winter in their wake.
 
Hares darken. Ferns spiral toward the light.
Muskeg spades the air.
 
After long seasons of burlap and manure,
our red honeysuckle opens in the yard
 
where I wait for hummingbirds to descend
their small wings wild with desire.

Fiddlehead

Above the still frozen ground
a thin sheath of brown
 
covering a tight spiral of green:
fiddlehead, or lady
 
fern, to be sauteed with a pinch
of salt and pepper.
 
When I kneel to harvest them
with my knife,
 
I feel the last of winter’s cold
rising from the ground
 
and I am lost in this small pleasure
nothing can contain.

Juncos

They’re the first
sparrows
to return north
 
before
spring’s halting
green. I watch
 
one hopping
from bare branch
to bare
 
ground: its song
is like the
sound of
 
a telegraph key:
dit...dit...dit…
insects...in...
 
Bark...dit…
dit...dit…
stop.

Walking the Marsh

I have followed the flight of a trumpeter swan.
I have looked through a window of ice.
 
I have picked crowberries blacker than coal.
I have touched lichen on a caribou’s skull
 
I have seen a hare with one white leg
I have seen a lady’s slipper wet with dew.
 
I have watched a snowy owl rise at dusk.
I have placed my hand in the print of a bear.
 
I have walked where mastodons walked.
I have fallen in love with the world.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.