Tilda and I Are Cast in a Play, and it’s Called Ode to a Murmuration of Starlings, and It Dabbles in Plagiarism, but That’s To Be Expected Because This is a Dream
Act 1
Scene 1
Inside of a dream, on an eerily familiar old high school stage with musty velvet curtains. Haven’t you been here before? Day.
TILDA, a gray greyhound in a handknit sweater, sits primly. The DREAMER is on a park bench, knitting rapidly, intently. The wool is attached to the hem of the dog’s sweater, and it is slowly unraveling from the dog sweater as it grows into a different dog sweater dangling from the DREAMER’s needles in her hands.
DREAMER
Tilda I will remake you, take you
to a different park. A dog needs
a new sweater
before dark.
TILDA
Barks.
DREAMER
What has been made
will be made again.
A life
is a form
of repetition. A rhyme.
You wash dishes
and then you do it again
for the umteenth time. Last
December my husband was living.
This December he’s dead.
Last year we strung up twinkle lights.
This year I’ll knit instead.
Scene 2
The DREAMER now knits on a white leather sofa under framed photos of femur bones. TILDA sleeps near the woodstove, wearing a new sweater. The BONES are confined to their frames, but they occasionally shift position and giggle as they speak.
BONES
In unison
Look at you, alone,
thinking your own
hands will keep you company.
DREAMER
But Tilda
is invited to tea.
BONES
If you could see
what we can see
watching you from the wall.
How falsely you keep your spine tall.
How you collapse into
emptiness
every day.
We know that sometimes when you speak
a flock of starlings
comes out of your mouth.
You burp and they fly south.
DREAMER
You have it all wrong.
I’m not alone if I’m talking
to you, if Tilda
is still snoring.
BONES
Maybe. But that’s boring.
DREAMER
Then what should I do
to appease you?
BONES
Take a trip but not
a fall. Search the wood
for nymphs, for poems.
If you’re in a thicket
of words
you’re not alone
even if your pen
is made of stone.
Scene 3
The sofa has morphed into the Spanish Steps in Rome as dream locations do, but the DREAMER still sits there, knitting. TILDA is by her side, ever patient and still. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY hovers in the wings.
DREAMER
Contemplative, faraway
Keats was alive here. Now
Keats is dead. I had that in my
head that time I squirmed
sideways in my dress
to breastfeed my baby
on these steps. A thousand
other people around
and no one saw me do it.
Except for Keats’s ghost,
consumptive, coughing.
Here stands one whose name was writ
in water, watching me
nurse my daughter.
PERCY BYSSE SHELLEY
Bursts in from stage left and speaks in a commanding voice
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
DREAMER
Insofar as his ghost is obsessed
with these steps. Did you know that he wept
while he watched me?
PERCY BYSSE SHELLEY
His fate and fame shall be
an echo and a light unto eternity!
DREAMER
Also he’s strangely perplexed by maternity.
By modernity.
He asked to use my phone.
He said he knew the nightingale
wouldn’t sing alone
in some melodious plot
in this spot
on the Spanish steps in Rome
I said I’d prefer to breastfeed alone
He said
that your baby might drink
and leave the world unseen
It was obscene
the way he stared.
The way he cared.
Enter JOHN KEATS in the center of the stage, quite suddenly, in a flash of light which is ideally achieved through pyrotechnics if your theater allows.
DREAMER
John Keats I love/hate
you how you wrote
poetry/how you died
so young.
For years I was hung
up on not
writing a magnum opus
by age twenty three. You
set an impossible standard,
you bastard.
JOHN KEATS
Defiantly, combatively
As though of hemlock I had drunk!
DREAMER
And then plunk
you dropped dead
with unwritten poems
in your head
and then you came here
to stare at me
Have we finally achieved parity?
JOHN KEATS
(fidgeting nervously, but attempting a dismissive tone)
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream…
(JOHN KEATS lingers on the final line, adding a degree of uncertainty as though he is unsure of what to say next)
Meanwhile: A cloud-sized murmuration of starlings swirls and swoops overhead before descending to the Spanish Steps, obliterating PERCY BYSSE SHELLEY and JOHN KEATS, masking their exit from the stage, so that it appears they have suddenly disappeared. When they are gone the birds continue to undulate in waves and indiscernible shapes before finally spelling out the lines WAS IT A VISION, OR A WAKING DREAM?
Curtain.
CARRIE STRAND TEBEAU holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and is a poet and fiber artist living in northern Michigan. She is a winner of the Dunes Review Shaw Prize and the Donald Murray Prize from Writing on the Edge.
VIVIANA DE CECCO is an Italian multi-genre author. As a photographer, she was a winner of Sunlight Press Magazine’s 2024 Photography Contest (2nd place). Her literary writings and translations have also appeared in The Polyglot Magazine, Aôten Magazine, Seaside Gothic, Hiraeth Publishing, Poets’ Choice, Yuvoice.org, Azonal Translation and others.
