Backup:

Toward the Dawn

Sing me a song –
when all the world is a sea of wrong,
when every weary mind is seeking fireside
and every voice is soft beneath a veil of snow
– a song will carry me home.

Take me away –
to where the sunlight is bright and strong;
to where these troubles fade out in the light of day
and every water finds its way down to the sea
– let water take me home.

Find me a way –
through the dark and toward the dawn;
though every rush of wind may send me back again,
every footstep brings me nearer to the day
– the day will bring me home.

Sing to the dawn –
to all the world in a frozen song,
to every bitter heart that holds its love apart:
“you must know the dark of night to find the dawn
– the dawn will carry you home.”

Featured Work:

Perfect for Holy Week, this contemplative setting of Christina Rossetti's poem, "Easter Even," was commissioned by the choirs of Good Shepherd Catholic Church, directed by Anna Marie Friars.

Whaaaaaat

The Watcher of the Wood

When I wake gasping,
crashing back through
time and space and glass
to waken into darkness,
into silence,
into breath –
thirsting, reach for water,
as if water could save me,
could melt the frozen stand,
burn the forest to its knees
and fight the voice that calls me,
ever downward,
into sleep.

I know that I have fooled the one
that marks the trees with blood;
that sightless, dead-eyed demon –
the Watcher of the Wood.

But as I move into the night, I find
a shadow binds its breath to mine;
frost now formed into a shade –
a Watcher in the Wall.

With rake of claw, it clings behind
and whispers in the dark;
a soundless fear,
a mouthless face,
an endless,
raging doubt:

If only I had found my feet.
If only I could fight.
The walls have teeth tonight.
The walls have teeth tonight.

Faces in a mirror,
liars in a mask –
I hate this hall of glass,
this endless, ruined rank,
naked and blinking,
imprisoned by light
in a place too tight for breathing,
our chest now sick of heaving,
the voice that lingers from a dream
now fails to force this frozen throat
to scream –
Am I the Watcher in the Wall?
this flightless, red-eyed demon
crashing back through
time and space and glass
to grasp this fractured face
and rasp:
run.

But,
being sated
now with water,
I wander back
through wood and plaster,
to pass the doorway
leaving darker dreams
and phantom teeth
to chatter in the hall –

to where you lie asleep;
helpless paw and tired feet –

and sinking down into the moss I find
a world now warm with fin and wing,
a voice that grows now in the green
and echoes down into the deep:

I am the Watcher of the Wood.

And closing eyes to sea and sky,
the wind that haunts the tree:
your endless, rolling breath,
ever onward,
into sleep.

Sacred Music

Sacred Music

Toward the Dawn

Featured Work:

SATB | Secular