Pledge
2021. For Advanced Middle, High School or Community Choir. Two parts or SAB and piano / 4 min
In July 2018, the March for Science hosted its second Science / Government Institutions and Society (SIGNS) Summit in Chicago; a national conference that empowers those committed to championing evidence-based policy and science for the common good. The summit gathered a diverse array of science advocates for a weekend of knowledge sharing and collaboration focused on the call to stand up for science.
The Wick Poetry Center joined with the March for Science and Poets for Science to bring creative expressive writing to the SIGNS Summit. Participants contributed to a community poem during the opening plenary resulting in the poem "Pledge" which was read at the end of the weekend to conclude the summit.
Written for two-part choir, this composition draws from that poem.
The Wick Poetry Center beautifully illustrated this pledge in their collection, “Speak a Powerful Magic: Ten Years of the Traveling Stanzas Poetry Project,” Black Squirrel Books, Copyright 2019 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio.
The singing of “I pledge allegiance . . . to the coastline” majestically reclaims that phrase from its typical school use.
Pledge
A bright light streams through my window.
I look up to thank the gift of the Sun
whose energy drives our own.
I pledge allegiance to the coastline
The meeting of earth and sea,
To the depths of the oceans
And the life that remains undiscovered
Curiosities for our wonder.
Source of fear and awe.
Now suffering herself.
To trees tall and green I pledge allegiance
To the call of the loon by the lake
To creeks with their bubble and gurgles
I pledge allegiance
to the starry night sky
washed out by bright city lights,
one Galaxy, in brilliance, above all.
I pledge allegiance to resilience
and resistance
to our blind, tenacious spirit,
ever adapting.
I pledge allegiance to the prairie,
root mass vining through native soil,
The fern frond, verdant with orange specks.
The shrouded salamander.
The fallen, decaying log returning
to the earth beneath my feet.
I pledge allegiance to the people in this room
and the potential we represent
for social change
for justice
for science in service for all.