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Twin Rocks
I arise at first light and shuffle sleepily past the windows and darkened rooms, through the trees and dunes, down to the buffeted shore. The rocks reach up from the black sea, hulking silhouettes on the pale horizon. When the wind is right they will make music. One morning I listened as they played to a hundred pelicans taking flight. I believe they have played to thousands. Not far to the south, a stream of clear mountain water collides with the teeming Pacific. Small silver fish flash in the riffles. Sandpipers dash and dart in their skirmish with the waves. Strewn about the sand are pebbles that glow, pieces of shell that vibrate with color. I have seen the sun set here in every season. I have seen the moon between the rocks. I have seen Venus part the clouds. It is cold now, not yet spring.
From "Moves Between Worlds"
(c) 2012 Eric Walter
(c) Eric Walter 2017
Beach Notes The languages are fading. I can borrow them for a time When traveling But when the land becomes a memory So does the song. -- I am disappointed when I forget. I am sad when I remember. I am content when I am here. -- Sometimes you can see the storm coming. Sometimes it rises abruptly from within, The tempestuous grief of heartsongs Never fully sung. -- The clouds come and go Like the gods Whose tears I welcome but Never collect Unless my life depends on it. -- I will have one more day here on earth If you please. If I please. -- Dead stars Gleam through. Songs free Stray here. Dawn fires Burn callow dreams. -- Far along and introspective I deliquesce In roving mists of Memory and returning. Peerless storms scatter The meaning for which I haplessly Hopelessly yearn. -- I cannot be broken by darkness. I cannot be mended with light. 
"Zuñi Sunrise" is a traditional Native American melody which was first transcribed into western notation and published as sheet music in 1913 by Carlos Troyer. (Charles Troyer, born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1837, was a pianist/composer/teacher who immigrated to America and settled in San Francisco sometime before 1871. He began using the name Carlos in 1885 and became known for his arrangements of Native American melodies. His transcription of "Zuñi Sunrise" was widely reprinted in books for schoolchildren and the scouting movement.) I first heard it as sung by the legendary Navajo singer, Ed Lee Natay, on a recording made by Canyon Records in 1951. This version was playing in the reconstructed great kiva at Aztec National Monument in Aztec, New Mexico, during my first visit there in 1990. I was entranced by the haunting simplicity and beauty of the melody. Soon afterward, I learned it on the Native American flute (by ear from the Natay recording) so I could perform it as part of my theater piece, Desert Time. The song has been part of my repertoire ever since. I have played it at weddings and funerals. I have played it in depths of the Grand Canyon, in the Maze, and on the banks of the San Juan River as a wake-up tune for rafters. I have played it for audiences in Kardamili, Greece and Siem Reap, Cambodia. I performed it for a class at the Naropa Institute taught by Native flute master, R. Carlos Nakai, who had recorded the melody for his 1983 debut album, Changes. In 2013, I was pleased to finally record my own version for Indalo Wind's debut album. On this recording, I play a six-hole red cedar flute made by legendary Cherokee flute-maker, Hawk Littlejohn, which I purchased from his daughter at a powwow in Durham, North Carolina in 1992. It is my favorite flute and one which has traveled far and wide.
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