Today’s Thick Frost

2021. TTBB, piano, and violin / 5 min

Score PDF

The feeling this piece imparts is decay mixed with beauty, using contemporary text from Hamer’s 2019 book, How to Catch a Mole: Wisdom from a Life Lived in Nature. Marc Hamer is an English gardener and poet who spent much of his adult life catching moles for a living in the Welsh countryside. The book draws on the strength of his waning years to explore the cycle of nature, solitude and contentment.

Two lines struck me and influenced the direction of the composition:

The icy air condenses and drips from my moustache.” I knew this had to be for a men’s choir.

Today's thick frost could hold a cat's paw.” The poem didn’t have a title, but I loved the tenderness of this line.

Performance note: Oboe could be substituted for violin.

Today’s Thick Frost

 

A dawn hillside

looking down into the valley

no pathways or desire lines

I'm walking the field edges

which trace the stream's meander

today's thick frost

could hold a cat's paw

trees and grey sheep still and mute

wait for warmth and light

with dripping leaves and fleeces

the icy air condenses and drips from my moustache

it tastes of snow and rotting leaves

cold air jellies on this old spade's splitting handle

and softens to slush as my hands lose heat

its worn grey T-bar matches

the callouses on my hand

without it I am useless

my body is working

my mind is idling

man-shaped, pig-like

I'm snuffling, bent

I'm leaving booted footprints 

in the crystalline grass

and I want to swim

to hang motionless

alone in a loch

my back tattooed with clouds

with seagulls squeaky

wheeling overhead.