EVERY DAY MERMAID POEMS

I've written a book of poetry and am collaborating with a fabulous illustrator Deidre Scherer. Just google for her and you can see her fine work.

Playing with sounding out the poems and hearing the different voices in them. Hearing cadences and trembles and music. Getting ready for a reading. I'm also choreographing the poems --that will be awhile :-).

Here is a poem I'm noodling with and posting it because it reminds me of tonight:

ALL WEEK

All week the night sky
Has hinted at red lavender
The moon has shone out
All the stars
Except a few
Casting shafts of light
On the meadow.
Gone are the flesh
Of Orion &
The Pleides.
The crickets hum
Caress the air
And I wonder what
Is to come
In the spaces
I have not foreseen.
I am enveloped
In a dark wool
Blanket.

GRATITUDE

I want to write all my friends
All my acquaintances
All my strangers
All my family
Who have helped me
Given me support
Given me insight
Given me their hand up
Their hand out
But it is too numerous
It’s like the apples
On the tree.

The birds circle the sky
The creeks get
Deeper and deeper every year
The trees know their role
They gather
Their roots sucking up water
Water sucking their tender shoots
Moment by moment
The dirt leaves
And then the fall
A bridge
A ramp
A railing
A calling
By the side.
Their greenness
Dissolving in the dark
Of the river that the creek
Became all those years..

And water cutting
Through dark earth to stone
Is grateful for the
Gift of green
Buried in its depths
Not seen, but known.

8 days of workshopping with george

Still shimmering from all the work ending in 8 hours of work yesterday and my friend Bob Poole filmed 8 takes in 3 hours today. Lots of fabulous exploration. Cutting words, improvising, on script, off script, on the chairs, on the floor. Working from connection is bliss where we arrived and hard trying to get there. So so worth it. We both ended up in another world. That's the joy of acting. We'll edit it and if we've got interesting film for public viewing we'll put it up on this site. I need to let the tapes cook for awhile or I should say I need to let it all simmer in me so I can see with more objective eyes. I've learned so much about this piece.

Goodbye sweet George. Off he goes back to New York. And a big heartfelt shout out to Bob who came in at the last minute with time, heart, and clear precise thoughts on changes. Working together where it's all about the work and nothing else is such pleasure.

And now I know when you're lucky enough to have it going well you get energized not depleted.

(posted a few days later)

Workshopping it.

My friend George Wright and I are planning to workshop the first eleven pages of the play the first few weeks in September. A preliminary goal is to film it if we get that far and put the rough cut up on this blog.

It's getting exciting.

And now to put our feet in the actual water.

Emily is dressed.

I found a costume for Emily today. It's a more contemporary version. You'll have to wait to see.

like a 12th century mystic

Fun reading the book THE MURDERER AND THE POET about the forger who foisted a made up poem of Emily Dickinson's on the world. It was sold by a sloppy Southby's auction to the Amherst Library. The forger used Franklin's documentation to create the "authentic poem". In passing the author said Emily Dickinson was like a Twelfth Century mystic. The Saint Francis bell is struck again. Nice authentication for me.