Reason is a Tree Staid

Reason is a Tree Staid is a nine-minute work for tenor and fixed media, setting a poem by Maggie Zavgren; an organ part is provided as an alternative to the fixed media. The vocal writing is free and unhurried, with the fixed media holding a slow ground beneath the voice.

Text

what I saw walking beside me on the road to New Caanan:
figures trembling & light from thickening snowfields dashing
throughout lightfields & shadows of blackened wood

hooded in night
a silver flute extends
trees hold the sacrifice and the garment
reason is a tree staid
the easiest breath
caress me, sail on to windows

where you are held in longing
heart pulled in circumambulations
catatonic perfunction to altar

as if you would rise alive for me
as if, in the poem, would rise to my lips say
    my swinging —
    growing rigid in August wind

what tree can afford all your medallions?
what lightening strike capture you?
my vestibule slips

do you see the fern curling in?
how wholly the sleeper gives herself to wakening seed.

— Maggie Zavgren