Advice (instrumental) | oboe, bassoon, guitar or piano by Frank A. Wallace

Artist Wendy Holmes Noyes is a childhood buddy of my wife Nancy Knowles. She is a fabulous photographer and sent me the poem below out of inspiration. I wrote the song within two weeks after receiving it. Adapting the piece for oboe, bassoon and piano was a natural after hearing the Monadnock Trio. I felt the sound of these winds do “evoke warmth”, “spiral upward” and “tumble down…in birdsong.” It was performed shortly afterwards on a faculty recital at Keene State College in Keene NH.

Advice
Wendy Holmes Noyes

On these cold nights of the equinox

Evoke
warmth ’til it washes over you
and radiates from within.

Accept
that you are a perfect child of god,
not in charge of the plot.

Laugh,
looking everywhere for lightness.
Don’t fret, 
for this corrects nothing.

Relish the black night
as it fills with the rippling song
of the woodcock, returned to dazzle his mate.

Learn from him as he spirals upward,
folds his wings at the peak, and plummets
in a fountain of melody to the dark field below.

Stand near where he lands,
then wanders curiously in circles,
beeping,

And suddenly takes off again with a burst of wings,
whistling as he ascends,
only to tumble down once more in birdsong.

Guard
your open mind. Rise each day into fresh courage.
Embrace the early turn to spring.

Follow
the thaw in the soil; like the killdeer and the robin,
spend the morning listening for worms.

Let meaning take care of itself.

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