The Coin & the Fish: A Songbook

A modern lyric sequence in five movements tracing an encounter that begins in human love and deepens into revelation. Quietly engaging the Petrarchan tradition, it reimagines Il Canzoniere from a woman’s point of view—the beloved as seeker, the encounter as initiation. The poems move through rapture, rupture, exile, and, finally, transfiguration. The voice is intimate yet mythic, with imagery grounded in alchemy and devotion; the sequence explores a contemporary experience of the divine through human love and the awakening of a witnessing feminine consciousness.

You could not see my clothes or skin.
It was my soul you saw me walking in.
And your gaze spilled gold into the air
Molding me with light-
O bold!
And dripping down my hair.