Wawing and Waning - Sheet Music for baritone + piano Carson P. Cooman

Waxing and Waning (2005) for baritone and piano is a set of three songs on texts by
American poet Elizabeth Kirschner. (The first song was composed in 2004, and the other
two were added in Fall of 2005.)

Although intended to be performed as a set, individual songs may be excerpted as needed.


Waxing and Waning
texts by Elizabeth Kirschner

I. Humming Softly
Why live full days
in lesser rooms
when we can walk lightly
upon plush stairs
fashioned by a god who loves
what humanity creates?
May you be happy,
may you be well,
may you live in peace
is the ceaseless exchange
that makes the world rhyme,
humming softly as summer's wand
moving through wooing wind.
Swans are grace notes,
as are we whose voices,
rich with residue, linger everywhere:
I shall cradle you gently,
I shall cradle you till the end.

II. Wake Up
Sleeping flower,
wake up!
The waxing and the waning
happen together only once.
Don't miss it.
Don't miss
the kiss that will claim you&mdash,
kiss of stars, kiss of blue air,
kiss of the invisible upon
the placid pond of your being.
Wake up!
There's always a great silence
worth listening to.
Peace encircles it like an aureole
of the light that lights
the waxing and the waning
all at once.
Big soul, little earth
all at once.
Big earth, little soul
all at once.
Do I care?
Wake up,
say yes!

III. Finale
Last night, I saw a bird
without a body, a blue,
glowing blur swirling
through a sky tipping
toward the winter solstice.
It was a wild, heaven-stricken
way, a soar that did not
need to land, grace without
falling, the sigh of a bow
across a violin strings.
O holy wholeness, this
is what we are, knowing
that we do not seek the music,
but the music seeks us.
We are its finale and
the elation of ovation.