David McCollum | V E R S E and I M A G E

Posts Tagged ‘David McCollum’

Saturday Share – Merry Christmas!

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Christmas, David McCollum, family, imagery, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing, Wilderness Advent on December 27, 2025| 3 Comments »

Saturday morning, after Christmas

If the Fates Allow

this could be the season we simply hang
together, forget parties, share a
cup of tea, perhaps those cookies with shining
sprinkles like you used to make, star
shaped, smell of baking better than feasting upon
any fancy cakes or puddings, the
presence enough, rooted and roosting – to fly highest
forgotten by two birds on a single bough.

Bill Griffin, for Christmas 2025

Thanks for this “Golden Shovel” poem goes to Sarah, Jeannine, Suzanne, Sophia, Kim, and Renee. We are the Tremont Cohort, the seven poets selected to attend the inaugural Tremont Writer’s Conference, 2023, in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We’re from Tennessee, Massachusetts, Ohio, and North Carolina, but for over two years we’ve managed to Zoom once a month to critique each other’s work and write something new together. MERRY CHRISTMAS, my friends! Thanks for the prompt. And deepest thanks to our inspired and inspiring teacher at the Tremont Conference, Frank X Walker.

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First a poem made from a song. Now a poem made into a song. In early 2018 conductor and composer David McCollum invited me to write a poem that could become the lyrics for a new anthem he wanted to perform for Christmas with the Elkin Community Chorus. We collaborated all summer, tweaks and adjustments to find the proper rhythm and cadence to fit the message. The Chorus premiered Wilderness Advent on December 2, 2018. Thanks for listening!

Wilderness Advent
(Pisgah Stranger)
Lyrics: Bill Griffin . . . . . . . . . . Music: David L. McCollum

Elkin Community Chorus 58th Annual Concert
December 2nd, 2018 – First Baptist Church, Elkin, North Carolina

Wilderness Advent
(Pisgah Stranger)

A stranger here, I sleep beneath the slash of stars,
The Pisgah forest deep and friendless.
I close myself to love, my heart requires the dark;
Can night within this cove be endless?

Come, you’ve slept too long
And love grows dim.
Awaken to a song – Can it be Him?

Is it madness or a dream that seems to whisper here?
The murmur of a stream or singing?
It chants, a still small voice, I’ve nothing now to fear
For tidings of great joy it’s bringing.

Come, you’ve slept too long
And love grows dim.
Awaken to a song and welcome Him!

And now the music swells as every fir and spruce
Unloose their boughs to tell the story:
May all God’s creatures wake, hearts quickened by the truth,
Invited to partake of mercy.

Come, we’ve slept so long
That love grows dim.
Awaken that our song may worship Him.

Come sing it with the wind and all the Pisgah throng:
The Child reclines within the manger!
With owl and bear and deer my soul’s reborn in song
For none of us is here a stranger.

Come, you’ve slept too long;
If love grows dim
Awaken to a song for it is Him!

Waken . . . welcome . . . worship . . . it is Him!

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– Bill

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The Birds’ Carol

Posted in Christian themes, Imagery, music, Photography, poetry, tagged Bill Griffin, Bill Griffin Photography, birds, Birds' Carol, Christmas, David McCollum, Elkin Community Chorus, imagery, Mark Merritt, nature poetry, poetry, Wanderer's Carols on December 25, 2020| 16 Comments »

The Birds’ Carol
Lyrics: Bill Griffin . . . . . . . . . . Music: Mark Daniel Merritt

Elkin Community Chorus
51st Annual Christ Concert / December 4, 2011
Director: David L. McCollum / Piano and Organ: Amy Tayloe and Amy Johnson

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By 2010 Linda and I had been singing for several years with VOCE, Surry County’s invitational chorale, directed by Sandy Beam and assisted later by Mark Merritt. Mark is a talented composer and had asked me before for lyrics. That spring VOCE had been invited to perform at Bilmore House in Asheville, NC, during the Christmas season and Mark wanted to create a suite we could debut there. The Birds’ Carol is the first of three movements in The Wanderer’s Carols. The following year David McCollum selected The Bird’s Carol for Elkin Community Chorus’s 51st Annual Christmas Concert.

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The Birds’ Carol

“Morning! Morning!” trills the lark, “The Babe brings gold to the sky!
A song of light now showers the earth, And we shall know God this day.

Now is the dawn of our new life,
And we shall know God this day.”

“This coat I wear,” caws the rook, “So black, so heavy, so grim.
Only One knows the way to make it bright – The Child who reclaims us from sin.

He lifts our burden upon himself,
The Child who reclaims us from sin.”

“Come rest with me,” coos the dove, “In this humble stable take ease.
Kings and shepherds together embrace The Prince who unites us in peace.

You make us one in all the earth,
O Prince who unites us in peace!”

“I . . . Thou, I . . . Thou,” vow the geese From dark earth to heaven above –
“May we join with Thee in a world made new; May we fly forever in love.

Give us wings of Your perfect light,
And we’ll fly forever in love.”

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VOCE of Mount Airy performing The Birds’ Carol, November 14, 2010, Winston-Salem First Presbyterian Church:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDPm6MYvacA&feature=related

Discussion of the symbolism of Lark, Rook, Dove, Goose:
https://griffinpoetry.com/2011/12/17/joy-hope-peace-love/

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Wilderness Advent

Posted in Christian themes, Imagery, music, Photography, poetry, tagged Advent, Bill Griffin, Christmas, David McCollum, Elkin Community Chorus, nature, nature poetry, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on December 18, 2020| 13 Comments »

Wilderness Advent
(Pisgah Stranger)
Lyrics: Bill Griffin . . . . . . . . . . Music: David L. McCollum

Elkin Community Chorus 58th Annual Concert
December 2nd, 2018 – First Baptist Church, Elkin, North Carolina

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This year (2020) would have been the 60th annual concert of the Elkin Community Chorus. The ensemble draws singers from towns and counties across northwest NC, rehearses for seven weeks, and gives two free concerts to the public on the 2nd Sunday in Advent. Linda and I have sung with the group for more than 30 years. We miss it. We’re listening to our stack of recordings from previous years and holding onto the hope that we’ll all be vaccinated and singing together again next fall.

David McCollum has been one of the group’s directors for more than 20 years. Several years back he asked me to write a Christmas poem for which he would compose the music. ECC debuted Wilderness Advent in 2018. Thank you, David, thank you Amy Johnson and Amy Tayloe for your accompaniment, thank you Tonya Smith, co-director, and thanks to the 90 or more of our neighbors whose voices make the waiting, the yearning, the anticipation of Christmas a sacrament.

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