Description
Michael Dennis Browne’s poem, Fire, takes me immediately to my memories, as both a child and a parent, sitting around summer camp fires, talking until the embers grew small and we grew tired. As I worked with the poem, I could feel an ever-so-slight chill in the air and the warmth of the fire on my body, as I watched the people I love talking and laughing together. I was there again, in the expansive timelessness of summer evenings.
“Summer Still on Earth” embodies the warmth and expansiveness of campfires and summer evenings, while also capturing the intimacy of these moments in our memories. The ending, in which we are taken out of our dreaming back into the present, is especially sweet as remember each individual child in the circle, during one magical summer.
Thank you, Michael Dennis Browne, for your poem and your friendship. Thank you, CorVoce for asking me for asking me to set a poem of Michael’s and for your premiere.
Text
Fire
You love a fire; you love to sit and watch
the little fires float up toward the larger,
you love how dark is torn awhile
by something ragged you’ve begun
with paper twists, with scraps, with twigs,
how leaves are shaking all about you,
and down the hill the owl is calling, calling.
You chatter, joke, wave sticks. Your eyes shine,
and it is summer still, on earth our home,
as always in that other land we dream of
with its fires, its children. You are twelve
as I write this; you are ten (just); you are seven.
Michael Dennis Browne
“Fire” from Chimes, copyright © 2017.
Used with the permission
All rights reserved worldwide.
Program Notes
Michael Dennis Browne’s poem, Fire, takes me immediately to my memories, as both a child and a parent, sitting around summer camp fires, talking until the embers grew small and we grew tired. As I worked with the poem, I could feel an ever-so-slight chill in the air and the warmth of the fire on my body, as I watched the people I love talking and laughing together. I was there again, in the expansive timelessness of summer evenings.
“And It is Summer Still on Earth” embodies the warmth and expansiveness of campfires and summer evenings, while also capturing the intimacy of these moments in our memories. The ending, in which we are taken out of our dreaming back into the present, is especially sweet as remember each individual child in the circle, during one magical summer.
Thank you, Michael Dennis Browne, for your poem and your friendship. Thank you, CorVoce for asking me for asking me to set a poem of Michael’s and for your premiere.
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