TWO SANDERS SONGS (2025) - for soprano and piano
Premiere: Rose Kearin and Maggie Hinchliffe, June 7, 2025, Fort Worth Museum of Art, Fort Worth, TX
Duration: ca. 9 min
Program Note and text:
I. In Hurricane, with Horses
The man, gray-flannel shirt lifted overhead
shielding him, strides long, alone in the blow--north
then south, cold then hot. Who would think
to count the rain, weightless, infinite, like slivers.
He yells and whistles silence against the howl
at six horses hunkered under oaks at pasture's end.
All around the woods groan, their bones pop.
The sky churns blackening butter.
Waist-deep grass underfoot rolls flat
as by waves upon a long shore. A loblolly pine
collapses, its root ball like a molar;
a wire tangle blossoms barb and spark.
The horses circle upon the circle of themselves.
He stands at their nervous center, an eye. Easy now,
he coos, and slips the halter upon the oldest head,
the one to lead the rest to shelter.
Now unhurried nudge through rivers in air,
as in the plodding cadence of high terrain,
the rocky switchback. Pitch and plunge
looming above them, clouds like cliffs ascend.
II. The Trees Know
The trees know. Ask the pine, ask the oak.
Before the storm, they are aware and prepare.
Sometimes, the ground is not enough to hold onto.
They roll their shoulders, breathe in ease and coat
themselves in calm though the nervous sky is reckless.
The trees know. Ask the pine, ask the oak
how they wait upon the weather’s weight, the pipers
of tortured music they must dance for, storm and stress.
Sometimes, the ground is not enough to hold onto.
You have seen them, (have you not?), waltzing
like metronomes, then throwing themselves ardent to the air.
The trees know. Ask the pine, ask the oak,
whose art it is to resist the storms, to disparage
the torrents and trouble the black skies as certain.
But—. Sometimes, the ground is not enough to hold onto,
and the most determined things rent leaves, limb, and root.
Have you not seen the sublime in colossal wreckage?
The trees know. Ask the pine. Ask the oak.
Sometimes, the ground is not enough to hold onto.
—Mark Sanders (2025)
