IF EMILY KNEW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

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So. Last day in Mexico for this season. This year. Looking forward to coming back in January, though! Packing. Sorting. Tossing. Sighing.

And I need to blast off today's challenge, which is to fiddle with an Emily Dickinson poem! Specifically, from NaPoWriMo, "...find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it!" (This, because in a 1924 edition of her complete works, the editors removed her dashes or changed some of them to commas!)

Here, then, is the poem I've chosen, complete with its proper dashes: 

The morns are meeker than they were - (32)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

The morns are meeker than they were - 

The nuts are getting brown -

The berry’s cheek is plumper -

The rose is out of town. 

 

The maple wears a gayer scarf -

The field a scarlet gown -

Lest I sh'd be old-fashioned 

I’ll put a trinket on. 

Here it is, turned into a block of text:

The morns are meeker than they were The nuts are getting brown The berry’s cheek is

plumper The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer scarf The field a scarlet gown

Lest I sh'd be old-fashioned I’ll put a trinket on. 

And here's my "new" poem, with newly broken lines, punctuation according

to moi and a couple of new words thrown in for good measure:

IF EMILY KNEW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

How I mourn the morns

that line up for inspection,

faces washed, expectant, 

that are meeker than they were

before this spurious change in the weather.

Some may think it nuts

for even now the yard is getting brown,

thirsty for the rain that never comes.

And look, the berry's withered on the vine,

thin and sallow as a consumptive cheek 

after a month indoors, but even it remembers

plumper times. 

The rose is not happy with the service to its roots.

Get out of town! cry all the growing things.

Even the maple clings to its seeds as if it knows

they will not grow in such stern ground.

The field behind the house used to be scarlet

with zinnias come fall; no more. 

Now any living thing must fight for life

the moment it begins. 

And that's as far as I'm going with this one as I want to have one last look at the ocean

(and maybe one last Pedro fish burger) before we go to the airport. 

See you back in Canada!

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