Kay Kinard Maves (1938 - 1999) was a very talented lady (musician/writer/photographer etc.) and my wife for 17 years. During that time she collaborated with me on several compositions, providing thoughtful, delightful texts and much encouragement and advice. Some of these texts are shown below. Most are available as musical works here on line, and are here linked to these works. (Go to the texts and click for web pages describing these works.) Kay also did the text for our Christmas Cantata The Legend of Befana, a 20 minute work for grade school performers published by MMB, St. Louis.
Published work By CF Peters, Ny, The Bestiary
Down in a grove so I've heard tell,
Down in a dingly, deep dark dell,
There lived an owl,
And a nightingale! nightingale! and a nightingale!
There was no lost love
Between those two,
And day and night you could hear them fuss,
Like this:
Chip, chirp,
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
Chip, chirp, how they fuss!
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
Chip, chirp, how they fuss!
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
Said the nightingale,
"Old Owl, how sad and sour are you,
With your ugly face,
You sit all night long,
And sing that awful scratchy song.
Of Who, hoo! Whoo hoo!"
Chip, chirp, how they fuss!
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
Chip, chirp, how they fuss!
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
This made the owl so mad
He ruffled up and cried,
"You silly bit of fluff,
At least I'm dignified,
You've a silly song, and a stupid face,
And feathers in your foolish head
As well as on the outside."
Chip, chirp, how they fuss!
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
And so they argued back and forth,
And neither would agree,
And neither would agree,
And, as I've heard, they're at it yet,
High in some dingly tree:
Chip, chirp, how they fuss!
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
Chip, chirp, how they fuss!
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
Chip, chirp,
Whoo, hoo! Whoo, hoo!
Gargoyles perch by day on the rooftops,
With frozen stone smiles,
and long, lolling mouths ajar,
no movement,
no sound,
'til dark,
and then
GARGOYLE!
Zipping, slipping
thru the night air!
Laughing, leering
tearing thru the night air!
Laughing leering
tearing thru the quiet air!
Scaring cats,
chasing bats
'til dawn.
When each one flits to his roof top,
and stares with his cold stone eyes
at the busy streets
thru the long bright day.
And knows that night will come
When
GARGOYLE!
Zipping, slipping
thru the night air!
Laughing, leering
tearing thru the night air!
Laughing leering
tearing thru the quiet air!
Scaring cats,
chasing bats
Reeling, spinning,
shrieking, grinning,
GARGOYLE!
Rows,are
strange.
Quite odd.
No scale?
NO!
What?
A ROW!
A scale? NO!
Odd...
Quite strange
are rows.
Rows are
strange.
Quite odd.
No scale!
A ROW?
A what?
No scale?
NO!
Odd...
Quite strange
are rows.
Most unique
Is the Unicorn;
A horse of sorts,
he has one horn--
Right in the middle of his forehead!
Poor Unicorn, Alas!
One horn he has; Alas!
It has no use, no use whatever.
It will not do to scratch,
to dig, so swat a fly;
It sits there to disguise,
I guess,
his left eye from his other.
Eye?
Yes!
If you were he,
you'd find that horn quite irritating.
To know one eye, was hid from the other
would be infuriating!
Eye?
Of course!
Most unique
Is the Unicorn;
A horse of sorts,
he has one horn--
Right in the middle of his forehead!
Fish, flesh, or fowl?
The Siren isn't sure
she's either
or all three
or only one!
She sings,
A song
Alone,
that no one knows,
high on the rocks above the sea.
Her head is very like a girl's
with long and lovely heir,
But she has as well a fishes tail
And wings upon her feet
to speed her through the upper air.
The Siren sits alone
and sings and sings and sings
for no one.
I
Here
green-blue
sky, earth,
Rolls
away
from me
Arcs
above, below,
matchless
Symmetry.
II
Understand
this:
Ordered, not
Immoral, Right
or Wrong,
Death for Life
is
Must.
III
I accept,
I will bathe
in the
waters
as they flow,
The darkness
ended,
I will rise
I will cleave
to the stars -
And their shining
and
my shining
now
are one.
I
Lovely
Like the
leaves beside your hair,
Like the grasses in the marsh you love,
Your face, as natural and serene,
emerges from the landscape,
De-lights my afternoon.
II
The gingko tree out-side
is touched with gold.
All the light
of winter afternoons
is gathered in this place
And in your face
I know regret
and wondering.
III
Spring comes,
as it must
I would wish it otherwise
I would wish the dark-ness to re-main
and spread
a-cross the light.
No-thing grows with-in
With-out the earth is catching life in both her hands
Oh Spring,
Un-fair to winter
in my life.
IV
Yet
if I close my eyes,
throw back the light,
If I spin on pages
fragile as the images I bear,
I bear this long winter
This long winter with its freight
of memory
and of barren night,
This long winter brings an end
and a beginning.
Sir Isaac Newton,
A very wise man,
Said
What ever goes up
Must come down.
Just like this song.
Which otherwise might have been stuck there for ever!
Poor song.
Woman's Songs
I
Little Girl's Song
* little girl's voice, small, uncertain; not necessarily a faked voice,
but clear and ingenuous--not a mature singer's voice
*Life is being very small...
Oh, I know!
Life is sun and stars
and trees and grass
and snow and Mud!
Oh Mud -
Oh, warm and brown and smooth and squishy
on my toes, and -
** a mature singer's voice
**Oh!
Your dress, how dirty
Oh, your hair a tangle!
And your ribbon
Gone!
Haven't I raised you-
Haven't I told you
Oh
You'll never be a lady!
*Life is...
Life is being very small -
Life is being told to be a lady -
Life is games
and toys, and playing tag
and tic- tac- toe,
and hop scotch, jump rope, riddles
running in the rain and
beating up the bully down the block-
**Oh!
You what?
Fight like a boy!
Tear your dress!
Bloody your nose!
Didn't I tell you,
Didn't I warn you-
Ladies never fight!
*Life...
Life is...
Life is being very small-
Live is growing up to be a lady-
I don't think I want to be a lady.
II
Young Woman's Song
My hair is curled,
My dress arranged just so.
My smile and manner practiced and serene,
I wait.
Oh, I wait for someone.
He will make my life complete.
He will fill my days.
He will be
All I have not been,
All I will not be.
So I have practiced
So I have learned.
If I can only sketch out a pattern,
Someone will fill it.
Someone will bring it around to a close.
There will be he and I,
There will be children.
They will be
All he is
All I am not.
III
Old Woman's Song
"What have I learned of life?"
"I'll tell you what I've learned."
I've learned that spitting in-to the wind
is a serious matter,
and that things
laid down easy pick up hard.
I've learned that whisky and men should be tried--
not at all,
in moderation,
in excess
to find what suits;
And that discretion is the better part of valor,
But that indiscretion
is more fun.
And I've learned that love
is not a condition
but a habit,
It can be broken
or accepted,
for the pleasure
and the sorrow that it brings.
And that to live well
and love well
is all that really matters.
That's what I've learned!