The Game | five songs by Frank A. Wallace

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The Game
by Frank A. Wallace

five songs for medium voice and guitar, op. 50; poems by Frank A. Wallace
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Written: December 2007 and dedicated to the composer’s sons Gus and Adam Wallace

Duration: 16 pages; 14 minutes

Instrumentation: medium voice and guitar; ten-string optional

All Gyre compositions are ASCAP
Copyright ©2007 Frank A. Wallace
Cover photography and design by Nancy Knowles
All rights reserved.

Five songs which comprise The Game [of life] was composed in the fall of 2007 out of desperation – desperation to create after several months of hellish administrative work and after a year of completing arrangements and recording of my Christmas project, A Season of Light. I needed to reconnect with my creative muse and these poems seemed the perfect path to that goal. They had been written at various times, but all speak of the joys and sorrows of raising a family in the country and my own struggles with finding a sense of place, having been born in Texas, raised in California and then settling in New England.

I. Manhattan
II. Furrowed Brow
III. Deep
IV. Tell us True Love
V. Vision

View a PDF of the complete poetry of The Game. Here is the fifth poem of the cycle:

The crones stand
Embracing their dead
Rot peeled bark
Like old skin.

Were it found
By a sidewalk
Café in Manhattan
Folks would scowl

But ‘twere found
Etched and carved,
Cast in bronze…

Here time is patient
Wood more graced
Life colors
And death
Feeds.

Frank with ancient apple tree

Me with an old crone that inspired this poem—an ancient apple tree surrounded by young saplings.