The Meadow Doesn’t Know About the Stock Market
A sweet and wry tribute to the meadow’s timeless wisdom
Music: Elizabeth Alexander
Words: George Ella Lyon
A rhapsody on the wise meadow, whose timeless philosophy embraces “the great wheel turning” while eschewing the “zigzag line of profit and panic.” The mercurial accompaniment soothes and delights, while injecting sly hints of Broadway, ragtime and ticker tape. By turns a frolic and rhapsody, The Meadow Doesn’t Know About the Stock Market offers a path to joy too often forgotten in this material world.
Details and Ordering Information
The Meadow Does Not Know
about the stock market.
Today she is worth
exactly what she was worth
yesterday, a year ago, at creation.
I don’t mean property value,
taxable assets. I mean
milkweed and copper moths
honeybees, cow vetch,
king snakes. Meadow life
is not money. What rises
and falls here are stems
and flowers, leaves and fruit.
No zigzag line of profit and panic
but the great wheel turning.
Here God gives of her
extravagance and here, like
flicker, viceroy, dragonfly
we come into our inheritance.
Poem by George Ella Lyon
“The Meadow Does Not Know” © 2009 by George Ella Lyon. Reprinted by permission of the poet
Performers
Premiere: Ruth MacKenzie, Jacqueline Ultan and Elizabeth Alexander. Open Eye Figure Theatre (Minneapolis, MN)
Jvette Haskin and Daniel Gledhill. Unitarian Universalist Church of Santa Monica (Santa Monica, CA)
Susan Peck and Elizabeth Alexander. UUMN National Conference (Tulsa, OK)
