SATB, flute, hand percussion
Published by Hal Leonard
This setting of a Ronald W. Cadmus poem channels Native American themes and rhythms while integrating actual Navajo language into the texture
Duration: 4’ 30”
Libretto:
My soul upon the winding water
lets my spirit roam
free and happy
to find the sacred altars
of nature’s finished beauty
in the secret dwellings
of the earth that we call home.
A heart that lies upon the ground,
of all our sons and daughters,
will hear the drum of other hearts;
together they will dream upon
the winding waters
And feel the call of drifting clouds
to hold the earth in tender care
so nothing ever stains the grass
where peace is left like dew
when from this life we pass.
The tree,
the woods
their moth’ring force
sustains us
The Spirit hawk spreads its wings
in divine embrace
To feel upon this earth
The warm Eternal Sunrise
And the sacred myst’ry
Of those who roam the winding waters
A land so pure
A soul so free
Is some-thing sanctified
in each stone and tree.
In a canyon deep
In a Prairie wide
in mountains
‘neath the moonlit sky
lives the Spirit of the Winding Water
The echoes of ancestral tribes,
Warm winds and purple sunsets
Where hearts and minds find unity
In sacred circles wide
one with life we’ll be
as flows
The Spirit of the Winding Water.