This is a set of poems I composed in the Winter of 2005-2006, while on a personal retreat in San Clemente, California.  I was staying on the beach for a few days by myself, just eight months after my wife died.  I took out my journal and began to write, using some older material as a starting point.  I found myself thinking a great deal on that trip about the possibility of moving on through grief to a new phase of my life, and the poems therefore have a melancholy quality, but also a sense of vague hope or possibility.

The Pacific has been set by the award-winning young composer Costas Dafnis for mixed chorus.  The World Premiere of “I. Sunrise” for womens’ chorus occurred on January 25, 2008, by the Michigan State Honor Choir in Grand Rapids.  Here’s the performance:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IFDeerIwjw   For more info on Costas and/or his setting of The Pacific, click here: Costas Dafnis

THE PACIFIC

©2006 Charles Anthony Silvestri

I.  Sunrise

The sun will come.

But now, only the sound of the waves,

Gently lapping;

Like the shallow breath of a sleeping giant.

The sun will come.

It will come and illuminate the vast expanses,

As black loses black and becomes violet.

The sun will come from behind the cliff,

Like a friend back from a long night’s journey,

Bringing gifts of gray and white and gold.

II.  The Deep

How calm you look today -

But I know what you hide.

Beneath your glassy canopy,

Under your dance of gentle swells and playful spray,

Churns a teeming storm of life and death.

What secrets yet dwell deep in your womb,

O most dark and ancient Mother?

III.  Sunset

The shadows turn and lengthen

Behind the slender palms,

Which stand like swaying sentinels

Before a silver road,

Whose gates are foamy whispers

Calling me

To join their ever-turning dance

Of surf, and tide, and day, and season.

Where will you take me, O Silver Road?

Toward new day, new life, new home

Across the sea?

Across the sea,

Into that rugged range of cloudscape

Slowly exploding

Pink, and white, and burnished gold.

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