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Dale Trumbore
Dale Trumbore
This ordinary summer afternoon (from A Calendar of Light)
With a shimmering mezzo solo, this piece is a love letter to summer days.
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A Calendar of Light
SATB Chorus & Mezzo-Soprano
This ordinary summer afternoon is a love letter to summer days. Even minor disturbances can’t disturb the narrator’s gratitude; neither writer’s block nor dark clouds overhead will deter them from appreciating the wild abundance of their life.This piece is excerpted from A Calendar of Light, a 75-minute work that takes the shape of a calendar and holds us accountable for our relationship with the earth, especially in the greater context of climate change. Ultimately, the piece calls for reflection and action.
Composer’s Notes
This work was commissioned by The Esoterics and is dedicated, with gratitude, to its Artistic Director, Eric Banks. A Calendar of Light was composed in part at the Tusen Takk Foundation, with thanks to Geoffrey Peckham and Patricia Melzer for their generous support.
-Dale Trumbore
Text
HAPPINESS
And I love this ordinary summer afternoon,
sitting under my cherry tree full of overripe fruit,
too much for us to pick, an abbondanza of a tree,
I love this dark grey catbird singing its awkward song,
and the charcoal clouds promising rain they don’t deliver.
I love the poem I’ve been trying to write for months,
but can’t; I love the way it’s going nowhere at all.
I love the dried grass that crackles when you walk on it,
leached of color, its own kind of fire.
Way off in the hedgerow, the musical olio of dozens of birds,
each singing its own song, each beating its own measure.
This is all there is: the red cherries, the green leaves,
sky like a pale silk dress, and the rise and fall
of the sweet breeze. Sometimes, just what you have
manages to be enough.
—Barbara Crooker
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