"The Mockingbird" is the first in a cycle of three songs to poems by Randall Jarrell, Black Wings. The other two are "The Owl's Bedtime Story" and "The Woman at the Washington Zoo."
I composed the cycle for the soprano Margaret Ahrens under a Guggenheim Fellowship. Black Wings was premiered at a Randall Jarrell Symposium at the University of South Carolina in 1986, in a performance by Ms. Ahrens and the composer.