Story in a Poem: "Sunday Morning"
Piazza Navona, January 5, 2020
Baths of Diocletian, January 5, 2050
“Meanwhile, Trump killed Soleimani and we are likely to soon be at war, or subject to a mass terrorist attack. Australia is burning to the ground. A late-in-history feeling pervades. A little appropriate to be here where the last great empire fell.”
So I wrote the morning of January 5, 2020 while on vacation in Rome, moments before I wrote the first draft of “Sunday Morning.” Later, I took off on some wanderings to see the sights: Piazza Navona on the eve of La Befana, the end of the holiday season on January 6, and the Michelangelo cloister at the Baths of Diocletian.
We had just landed in Rome and were staying in the Prato section of the city, near our good friends. We settled down for a winter homecoming to a place we had lived in and loved for nearly forty years.
We spent time wandering familiar streets, having dinners out, taking naps as the heat came on to drive away the slight chill of the early afternoon. Our time in Rome passed quickly. Little did we know how the rest of 2020 would pan out, and that it would be a long time before we would see those friends, those streets again. Indeed, three weeks after we left, scenes like that on the Piazza Navona that day would not take place for nearly a year.
My retirement was a few months away, and as a dry run, I got up every morning and spent the first half of the day writing. Here is the first handwritten draft of the poem:
When I returned to New York, I workshopped the poem with my colleagues from a workshop at the 92nd Street Y, which had been led by the amazing Rowan Ricardo Phillips. These poets helped me shape it into the poem it is now. This writers group continues to meet and has made a big contribution to all my work. Thank you, Rowan writers!
My friend, Norma Bowles, leads an organization called Fringe Benefits, which brings social justice theatre and media projects to middle school kids, mostly in California. She chose “Sunday Mornings” for her YouTube series, and here is that video of me reading the poem:
We played up the “privilege” aspect of the reader persona; I don’t drink my coffee in a Tiffany cup every day! But I do think I’m heading toward a Hitchcockian presentation here. Should I worry?
As I was putting Good Housekeeping together, I thought of the poems as an array, a constellation around a central bull’s eye: “What is it to share the love we have for our closest family and friends, our cherished homes, with the wider world that so desperately needs it now?”
Where do you think this poem might fit into that question? What do you think of when you ponder news from elsewhere? These poems are my way of grappling with my own disappointing response sometimes to all that is going on everywhere, including in my home town. And to appreciate the good things these Sunday mornings can bring. As a starting point, I try to pay attention, to witness, and not to look away. And to appreciate the good things I have.
Here is the poem as it will appear in Good Housekeeping, out soon from Poets Wear Prada:
Sunday Morning
Sunday morning on the parquet
Sunday morning on horseback
Sunday morning picking lice from her hair
….with a rosary and prie-dieu
Sunday morning with eggs benedict
…hiking the trail
Sunday morning loading the llamas to flee
Sunday morning taking down the bodies hanged as warnings
…lining up for rice and clean water
Sunday morning in the dog park
…digging someone this trench
…flying home from the slopes
Sunday morning throwing that fairy from the roof
…dodging a drone
Sunday morning building Legos for the little guy
….cruising garage sales for Depression glass
Sunday morning spraying down the roof
…probing for eels in the Keys
Sunday morning pulling corpses from the fence
…teaching the porter how to read
Sunday morning reviving the witness for more
Sunday morning God’s day of rest
Sunday morning like all the rest.
______
Questions or comments welcome.
To pre-order GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, which will be out in March 2024, email crownrockmedia@gmail.com.