Pledge

2021. For Advanced Middle, High School or Community Choir. Two parts or SAB and piano / 4 min

Score for two parts / Score for three parts

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.