December 10, 2025

Performed by The Amernet Quartet | Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 7:30pm | Leo Rich Theater, Tuscon, AZ

My friend and long-time collaborator, Paul Pines, died five years ago in 2018, on my birthday, June 27, in Glens Falls, NY. Paul wrote about synchronicity in his poems. Like the physicist Erwin Schrodinger, who famously posited the cat both alive and dead, Paul believed that many things happen for a reason, and not just by happenstance. And so I like to believe that Paul’s untimely death wasn’t just by chance. Might he have been signaling me?

These poems, which were left on his desk upon his passing, were sent to me by his wife. They remained on my desk for a long time before I could confront them, as the final documents my friend left for us. They confront dying, the ambiguity of Spring and death, and some unfinished business of our history, Vietnam. They are dedicated to Paul’s memory and his continued presence in my life.

The work is commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, with the generous support of: Larry Herron, Milt Francis, Richard Hereld, Neil Kleinman, Gary Kippur, James Wezelman.