Holy Crows for tenor and chamber ensemble Text by Duane Taylor
Kirsten Volness 2004
Holy Crows
a gift for Michael’s forty-ninth Christmas Nine days from Christmas it’s a crow day on the Farm ---hundreds work the still warm lawn or rest on bare, wet branches. Startled they fly, dark ash rising from prairie fire, sounding in flight ---whispers of countless wings, harsh crackle of their song--scouting for the next unplucked field, falling for the easy glean and endless stately jostling. I watch the lingering high few, when in the top flight I see six honest-to-God white crows! color of flat pearl and the flattened early-winter Illinois sky that tents them all.
Not brazen gulls mingling with the padres, but crows, their pale primaries moving the misty air like fingers, beating a blessing behind the whole busy congregation. Of such is the One Spirit, Friend who looks like us without our dark plumage, its fresh linen snapping out sheer joy. Slow down a bit. Enjoy being overtaken by the white ones who lead us to the everfreshening field where the kind old Fletcher cradling his dyeing brush paints us pure, like the heart we’ve always had. --Duane Taylor
This piece was commissioned by Dr. Cathie Apple and sponsored by the Rachkam Graduate School at the University of Michigan.