The View from Here

I was in the middle of rehearsing a new piece with a soprano colleague yesterday for a CD project on the music of composer Lori Laitman. The text of the song was from a poem by Joyce Sutphen, Poet Laureate of Minnesota, Burning the Woods of my Childhood, and as I played and listened to my colleague’s beautiful voice singing the haunting words, tears sprang to my eyes.

This is rare for me, as I am usually so focused on what I’m doing playing-wise that my emotional wall stays up. This time was different, though, as the fourth anniversary of my mother’s passing is next week, and the words Kristine sang took me right to my still-deep well of grief. It was both beautiful and painful as I felt the longing for my mother and the deep chasm of death. So final, so heart wrenching.

Music has that power to transport us in an instant to a memory, a place in our heart sometimes long-forgotten. That, mixed with the anchor of that Friday morning in St. Vincent’s Hospital- my brother’s birthday, no less- when my mother left me, brought my grief from its hiding place.

I no longer dread these moments of pain; they are gifts of remembrance, even as the tears run down my face and my heart contracts as memories flood my mind. It is all a reminder of great love and devotion, of sacrifice and beauty- moments I never want to forget. I will play this music that pierces my heart for my mother, will sing my grief out through my instrument, a message so strong that it will cross the divide and be delivered to my waiting angel. I feel it, I know it.

I am burning the woods of my childhood, tree by tree,

        I am warming myself by the fire of those days.

        I am remembering faces I can no longer see.

        And the places I loved that are gone from me

        And the roads and the paths and the open ways,

        I am burning the woods of my childhood, tree by tree.

        Where the elm trees stood, where the fox ran free,

        And we listened to the owl and the screeching jays,

        I am remembering the faces I can no longer see.

        For those who walked under the pines with me,

        Who cannot join me at the fire as I sit and gaze,

        I am burning the woods of my childhood, tree by tree.

        Thinking old dreams that can no longer be

        Watching them fall into ashes, the reds into grays

        I am remembering the faces I no longer can see.

        While the fire goes low and night is around me,

        The memory of that time rises up from the haze.

        I am burning the woods of my childhood, tree by tree,

        I am remembering the faces I no longer can see.

— “Burning the Woods of My Childhood” by Joyce Sutphen