— Prairie Elegy —

2019

commissioned by Staley High School, conductor Tracy Resseguie
and Liberty North High School, conductor Brian Hartman

manuscript

A Prairie Elegy

A deep stillness settles on the prairie,
These ancient, fertile hills,
Row on tended row of grain,
As storm clouds gather,
Bothering up the southern sky.
Even the birds are silent.

Here where once, over tallgrass trails,
The covered wagons rolled;
Here where once proud nations roamed
And danced beneath the stars;
Here where once deep waters churned
Under ocean primaeval;

Now these waters roll and dance
In the thickening sky above.
The storm cloud roars and opens up,
Releasing his imprisoned sea
Upon the thirsty earth below.
Soon he’ll shamble northward on
Across the county line,
His distant thunder slowly dying.

Look out upon these greening fields,
This fragile, open land,
And see the slow encroach of man
Moving like a storm,
Paving gray these fields of green
Until they grow no more.

Charles Anthony Silvestri (b1965) website