New Work in Process: Staged lyric poem/Play

Surprise surprise! Rewriting a staged lyric poem/play I wrote over 15 years ago: Drowning in the Same Sea: Thirteen Conversations in the Hereafter with Emily Dickinson and Saint Francis.

Here is my process over 2 weeks reworking 1 paragraph. All changes have to work in moment of conversation and with the rhythm and thru line of the play. whew!! I won’t really know until I have finished the whole play and sat with it.

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Hope for Emily Dickinson

Here is a poem called Hope. It was inspired by Emily Dickinson’s famous poem about hope and her explorations of death. Her last written words were, “Called back.”

Death can scare me, so of course that is at the heart of my poem. It is from Everyday Mermaid published by a thousand flowers®.

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A Fly

When you’ve been alone all day—
even though you’ve talked to a neighbor
a mail man, a homeless man, a friend on
the phone:

There’s this fly. It started
the morning with a buzz.

Is it     inside?     out?     It’s in.
Damn, should I kill it dead?
Damn it dead, should I kill it, but with what?

Upstairs I go to the computer.
Back down again.
In the living room I sit on a big
leather chair.

Around it goes, passes me
By. Dives straight behind the clothes
on the rack
by the front door.

Jump up I, and run slinging open it
To whoosh IT out—but no luck for me
                                   no luck for it.
Hidden, no FLY zone.     Gone.    Done.

Out I go to buy food for dinner
Cook and chop. Chop to cook.
Saffron and basil. Chicken in chunks.

Down I sit at the dining room table
look up to see…
                                     my     friend     fly—  

Emily Dickinson and I.

 

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