Your Eyes and the Valley

“Your Eyes and the Valley” is the first movement from a larger work, Canticles of Crimson, that is scored for chorus and soprano solo. This movement focuses on recollections of love’s tender moments, ones that we have and ones that are gone but not lost to us. This and the work titled “Loam” may also be performed as a two-movement suite.

I. Your Eyes and the Valley
from Valley Song, Cornhuskers

Your eyes and the valley are memories.
Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl.
It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline.
It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down.
And your eyes and the moon swept the valley.

I will see you again tomorrow.
I will see you again in a million years.
I will never know your dark eyes again.
These are three ghosts I keep.
These are three sumach–red dogs I run with.

All of it wraps and knots to a riddle:
I have the moon, the timberline, and you.
All three are gone—and I keep all three.