Heartstone is a reflection in music on a ‘lost’ poem. The poem described in its two short verses a summer’s day, a landscape, a fossil found and placed in the palm of a child’s hand. The poem inspired a seven-movement work for wind, brass and percussion with solo piano. Here is its poetic programme note.

Chert

The piano draws an arc of rhythm
rising then falling.
Above
two choirs of wind and brass
exclaim, fanfare, mark out
shorter, determined
gestures of sound.

The procession, almost a march,
becomes a dance.
Alone
Two choirs of wind and brass
become four couples
whose music weaves
from complexity a simplicity:
Chromatic to Pentatonic
twelve becoming five.

Prase

Four stopped horns,
five extended tonalities.
Together they wander
a maze of Pentatonic paths;
alone, and in pairs, as a quartet
they discover within
a measured harmonic rhythm.
Tension: resolution

. . . and surrounding
their every move
the piano
insists an obligato,
a continuum of phrases,
absorbing into itself
the warp and weft of horn tone.

Sard

Oscillating
in perpetual motion
the full ensemble
occupies a frame
of time and space.

Flutes, reeds,
double-reeds
brass, piano,
percussion
mirror-fold on mirror-fold
layer upon layer
overlapping.

Yarns of threaded sound.

Tuff

Without a break
the mirrored oscillations
patter pentatonics
on tuned percussion
of marimba and vibraphone

whilst
a *batterie of drums
lays down
shards of beaten rhythm
against this onward
folding of tonality change.

In the background
a choir of winds
flutes and single reeds
waymark this recursive journey
gathering together
cadential moments and the
necessary pause for breath.

Marl

Relentlessly, the motion is sustained,
piano-driven,
a syncopated continuo,
rhythm-sectioned
amidst layers of percussion.

Adding edge,
a choir of brass and double reeds
amplify the piano’s jagged rhythms
providing impetus for
phrases to become longer and longer,
ratching up the tension,
ever-denying closure
until the batterie
delivers
a conclusive flourish.

Paramoudra

Pulse-figures of winds.
Motific cells of brass.
Both
negotiate a stream of
fractal-shaped tonality
expanding: contracting.
A blossom of fanfares

folding into
pulsating layers
of tuned percussion,
flutes and reeds.
A dance-like episode

absorbs a chorale.
Four horns in close harmony
against the continuing dance.
A duet of differences

flows into a cascade of chords
in closed and open forms.
The piano supports
brass-flourishing figures
before a final stillness.

Heartstone

In gentle reflection
the solitary piano –
a figure in a landscape
of collapsed harmonic forms -
presents in slow procession
the essence of previous music.

Brown oak leaves underfoot, last year's sodden
reminders that newness always ends. But
not today

while the creek, silent in summer, chortles
about last night's rain, full of spring vigor
far below

the limestone bluff edge where
I stand, chert nodules and fractals
peeking through

springy new undergrowth, broke down
limbs, leaf litter and dark soil.  I came
for morels


but it's too early, too chill yet. Tomorrow's
predicted sun may bring them out. Early
mayapple

sprouts fool me, draw me to admire other
understory plants: trillium, maidenhair fern,
spring beauty,

johnny jump-up and more whose names
I knew once but forgot. I came alone and
I don't need

names. Names mean nothing without
voices and other ears. I love the silence
I bring here.

The truth hurts
As bad as dirts
Better respect it's spurt
Stimulating like a glance in that mini skirt
generating images of hands in my shirt
Better be told with smile like a flirt
Than withholding enslaved in a chert

feldspar conglomerate
pyrite flakes sparkle
basalt backdrop
…granted, the granite
is liken to a gneiss
but placed near the soap or sand
it stands alone without chip-ability
raw uncut opal sending prisms dancing
against the distorted garnet plug –
her ruby lips shown bright
against the chert and ashen
speckles of flint
diamond twinkles
fall from topaz tear ducts
land softly on an emerald blazer
adorned with ruby buttons –
****** at the rock show
I marvel and the marble
and experience simpatico with a sapphire
while the tourmaline tantalizes my taste buds
sending me reeling into a radical thunder egg
as the agates flew *****-nilly
I groped blindly for a brick to steady myself
but instead fell hard onto the concrete
or was it asphalt….
either way, I may as have well been tarred and feathered
dipped in oil
and sent to the borax plant –

You’ll find a turtle walking slow,
or in the sea prepared to go
a thousand miles before its old.
It migrates without being told.

You’ll find deer mostly in the deep,
and every one knows when to sleep
and when to stay awake to feed.
They do the things they know they need.

You’ll find a tree that buds in spring,
and every year it leaves a ring
inside a ring. It also knows
to lose its leaves before it snows.

And grasses grow in rocks and chert,
and roots go dormant when the dirt
becomes too cold for them to swell
and pull cool water from a well.

And rocks will weather when they thaw,
and shatter when the weather’s raw,
and leave behind the smallest grains
to nourish all things when it rains.

Lonely Nights
Silent tears, fears, years.
Tears wash away fears,
Years drain silent tears,
Locking away all the fears.

Broken Dreams
Shattered hopes, ropes, slopes.
Hopes tied to frayed ropes,
Slopes of despair, dreams elope,
Locking away all the shattered hopes.

Tearful Memories
Pain, rain, drain.
Rain washes away the pain,
Drain discharged rain,
Locking away all the pain.

Guarded Heart
Heart, rampart, dart.
Painful rampart heart
Blocks away sharp love darts
Locking away the heavy heart.

Hurtful Scars
Hurt, dirt, chert.
Hurtful scars stain like dirt.
Dirt crystallizes in chert. Buried and inert,
Locking away all that hurt.

Lung tree
Drink me
Take in that consequential
Energy
And please
Touch the sun with buds and dance
Perpetually
Until the day is said and done

Concrete
Upon what day will you melt to butter?
In what age will you split
Asunder
And our squishy nubs will touch
The naked land
Of younger
To caress trampled memory

Great comet
Of the heated sky
Roll chariots to the marble
Castle far by
Draw the ceiling and cast alight
The endless view of the constant night
Great God of mine.

In the photobooth
We do a silly face
Clicking the parsecs back into focal
View
And drawing upon that inflationary
Balloon
To which we ride
A darling damselfly
Old and full of chitionous youth

Old dirt
Move softly your mother
And place her dead things upon the nether
To compress into flaking chert
And ****** from the depths
An exhibit of great feature
The future of us
Lost within
The earth

Great road
I see not where your terminus goes
I know not from what strange township
You built the mountains and tumbled abyss
But when we shall be missed
And the world will roll on with constant bliss
Forgetful of the citation of our greatest works
And the obliteration of everything
Timeless.

Smooth as beeswax on red catlinite
Sharp as black chert knapped out of spite
Souls in this creek wander downstream tonight
Dreams wrapped in sinew take their last flight
Listening to darkness from old cutbank heights
Cardinals chasing crows through pale moonlight

So I put my trust
in the hands
of man

Relied upon
the knowledge
he possessed

Testing the strength
of his flesh
I put the truth to rest


For what can grow
in the disidents
garden of desert ?

Void of living water . . .
only rock and sand and chert


Certainly not the truth
as it is claimed
raising their rights
to just desserts


Oh , the failings
of feeble man
Whose thirst is etched
on bone

Written with
diamond tipped desires
across their ******* of stone

For what
springs forth
from the wells of hearts ?

Torrents
of premeditated will

The defiling overreaching reasons
are passions fit to ****


Serpentine sin
denudes
the wicked heart

It twists its coils
around the truth ,

Bites !
then as soon arrived
it surly fast departs .


The heart
deceives the sightless mind
planting seeds of doubt

Producing moldy
grains of lies
decayed
within - without

How can one be
true of heart
when everything
falls apart