Tag Archives: William Shakespeare

What you Will, or What we Wish Might Be

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Monday Morning Musings:

What You Will, or What We Wish May Be

“A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.”
—“The rain it raineth every day” from Twelfth Night by
William Shakespeare

What you will, or what we wish may be–
the rain it comes, and grass grows green,
the flowers bloom, and bees they feed
the songbirds sing and scatter seed

across the fields, from river to sea
random blossoms, a so-called weed,
yellow, brown, then green once more,
almost as it was before

but never quite. Perhaps you see
the endless blue, and wonder if or how
you fit as future flits. Is dawn preview
of what will come, or déja vu?

I’ve been here before, but can’t foresee–
only wish for what may be,
no Cassandra, no decree,
all is chance despite prayers or plea—

the storms come, the sun shines,
so laugh and drink the wine,
love fiercely while berries ripen and leaves fall,
in thrall of light, darkness comes to all

we say goodnight, and if nothing is as it seems,
it’s curse and comfort, that we dream.

We’ve had more sun than rain this week, though Saturday was rainy, and it was not a fun drive to the wine bar we visited with our daughter and son-in-law. We sampled a variety of wines and nibbled on cheese. I tried a Greek Xinomavro, a French Syrah, and a Barolo Nebbiolo, which my daughter thought should have aged more. Her Piedmont Nebbiolo seemed more complex, if not as full-bodied.

I took flatbread from the freezer and mixed-up toppings from what we had in the refrigerator for dinner that night—Gouda, red onion, and broccoli on one, garlicky mushrooms, goat cheese, and scallions on the other. Delicious!

Yesterday, we saw the Lantern Theater’s production of Twelfth Night, the subtitle is “or What you Will.” It was a wonderful performance in an intimate space with well performed musical numbers and well-acted comic performances. We walked around the city a bit first. (The garden wall guardian is for Kerfe. )

Next month we’ll be seeing another performance of Twelfth Night that will most likely be very different, but hopefully just as enjoyable.

A Week in April

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Monday Morning Musings:

A Week in April

“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.”
–Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”

“Alas, poor country,
Almost afraid to know itself. . .
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy.”
–William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”

Yo-Yos and Birds

This is a yo-yo week,
temperatures and emotions
bounce up and down.
Michigan and Wisconsin rise,
Tennessee falls—and in Florida,
the swamp creatures reign.
Books are banned, and women die.
We could be wearing stars again. But–
you won’t flinch till they come for you.

The poet’s sighs, the playwright’s lines
place withering Death amongst the blooms–
they catch the light and scatter on the ground.
To every season, love reborn, and so, too, evil,
Recurrent plagues not marked. We wait for miracles.

Now the robins sing and call the sun,
we watch the eagles in their nest,
and geese that honk and hiss, paddle and fly.
The crows ground us—
pairing, gossiping, they work together
to chase the predators away. When we go low,
they go high.

Epilogue: The Three Fates Huddle in the Kitchen Beside the Dirty Holiday Dishes

And is it bad we laughed
about turning our parents’ ashes into stone—
how comforting the testimonials,
placed under pillows or on the shelf
no one would ever be alone,
we chortle, even as we think . . . well. . .maybe.

Dessert. More wine. “L’chaim.” We drink.

My husband and I marked the first night of Passover on Wednesday night with sparkling rosé at dinner, as we did a mini, condensed Seder.

Our older child was here for a few days. On Friday, our daughter came over, and they wrote the annual Passover play together. This time they decided to use Chat GPT by feeding it with characteristics of all of us involved, and which they then revised. A wonderful effort as always. Let’s just say you wouldn’t go to our family Seder if you want to experience a typical Seder. But we do have fun! Our daughter-in-line FaceTimed us for the play. We put out glasses for Elijah and Miriam, and then we decided to put one out for my mom, too, because she liked wine. (“Give me whatever is dry.”) In case you don’t know, we are supposed to drink four glasses of wine during the Seder; however, we never get through the whole Seder. We forgot to open the door for Elijah, but my sister accidentally found the Afikomen. There was also an epic game of making plague frogs hop into a water glass.

We use the matzoh covers that our kids made when they were little kids. This year, we included a tiny house that poet-artist Claudia McGill made and made a plague Passover it. I ran outside to take a photo of the beautiful sunset that night, too.

We watched the Joni Mitchell Gershwin Prize program with our older child, and it was SO good. Highly recommended—great performances and very moving, too. They also had her artwork on display.

Poetry month is a busy time. As well as writing, I’m still catching up on comments and writing.

Well, Here We Are–it’s August Again

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Monday Morning Musings:

Well, Here We Are, It’s August Again

Every day opens with possibility,
every story flows from what if,
each second is a mysterious connection
from what was to what is

Sunrise Clouds

next passes, too, in a stream like
the luscious light of the sun,
outside of time,
both ancient and new

Sunrise Reflections— worlds collide in light and color , Merril D. Smith, 2022

like memories,
the past remembered is reborn,

perhaps re-written, or embroidered upon,
added stitches to a tapestry, patches placed
over the tears in the fabric,

until we can’t tell what was the original
and what was added,

and so, we guess, living between shadows,

and walking down paths
we imagine, we ask, “what if?”
and “what happened next?”

This is fiction and science,
this is every story ever told,
our fates and faults, “not in our stars,”*
and we, not star-crossed—yet,
dependent on them for our existence,

each of us carrying traces of stardust,
holding an infinitesimal speck of before time–
and each of us an answer to what happened next.

Ceres Park
Ceres Park

This past week we had high heat and humidity and normal summer heat with less humidity. Elsewhere there have been huge wildfires and floods. We got a little bit of rain, but not enough.
While we wait to see if our nation is destroyed by authoritarian rule and our Earth dies, we go on living.
My daughter and I visited Kennedy Cellars in Hammonton, NJ for some mother-daughter bonding time. My husband kindly served as DD while we sampled wine flights and nibbled at the delicious cheese board. It was a very hot day, but bearable in the shade, as we really didn’t want to sit inside in the small space with rising Covid numbers.

Kennedy Cellars

On Saturday with the lower humidity my husband and I took a morning walk in Ceres Park in Mantua/Pitman, NJ. It was very quiet and peaceful, except one section of the trail goes under an overpass, but even there the light was beautiful. Then later in the afternoon, we visited Auburn Road Winery for wine and pizza.

Ceres Park

One night this week, we watched a play from our video backlog. It was The Merry Wives, performed last August when plays in Central Park in NYC were permitted again and televised this past spring. Perhaps Shakespeare purists would not approve, but I think it was just what we needed. It was a streamlined version of The Merry Wives of Windsor set in Harlem. Shakespeare’s plays were of the moment and appealed to common people as well as the educated and aristocracy, so I think of this as sort of the same thing. Here’s how it looked. If you have PBS Passport you may still be able to stream it.

We’re also watching For All Mankind (Apple TV), a series based around what if the Soviet Union landed on the Moon first? In this series, it changes history, and each change changes something else.

These two shows gave me the idea for my musings. Also, both of my parents, now gone, were born in August, which has me thinking of August, what was, what is, what might have been. . .

I’m hosting dVerse Haibun Monday today, so I will be back later.

*”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
–William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Banished Ghosts

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Banished Ghosts

What is a winter’s tale told in the spring?
A story of ghosts, adrift in the green.

xxxxA story of ghosts—there on the river
xxxxa sparkle, where a naiad swims and shivers.

A naiad swims, sparkling a glow,
silver on the surface, though dark below.

xxxxThe dark below crawls through our dreams
xxxxwith monster claws and demonic screams.

The monsters and demons of nightmares—your ghost--
all banished by the light of day--or almost--

xxxxthe light banishes ghosts, and so, hope grows
xxxxlike a smile, like a daffodil in snow.

A daffodil, a smile in melted snow, hope sings
 for the winter’s tale re-told each spring.






This is for today’s NaPoWriMo prompt, a type of poem called a duplex, a form invented by poet Jericho Brown. I think mine still needs work. This is also a response to Ingrid’s dVerse prompt to use one of Shakespeare's play titles she selected. I chose A Winter’s Tale.
Sparkling Delaware River

Measuring

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Monday Morning Musings:

Early Morning, Delaware River at Red Bank Battlefield ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021

Measure by measure—

in hope and despair
from winter bare to sun-charged air

  • Geese
  • Egrets? Cranes?
  • Crow
  • Geese flying over the Delaware River

we smile through tears
with spirits brightened, but still the fears

of what comes next?
Another crisis, another text

of sorrow or disaster.
Can we master

moving from the passing of this year?
Too many lost, but we’re still here–

and so, we live as we’re able,
finally meet across a table

to eat and laugh, while those who’ve passed
remain within our memories, clasped

in synapsed snapshots, held fast,
until all is faded, at last,

everything balanced, a measure
of sadness, a finding of treasure

in the remembrance of what she said,
those words, like a thread

linking us, a connection
a form of resurrection

in “do you remember?” Phrases bright—
like the promise, with shadows, there’s light.

Ripples. One Year. ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021

April is a strange month all over, it seems—one day cold, one day warm, full of storms, and also flowers. A bunch of tulips that we didn’t plant have popped up in our garden.

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my mother’s death. Now that we’ve all been vaccinated, we went to our younger daughter and son-in-law’s house—and for the first time in over a year, hugged and ate inside. She made us a tapas feast, and I baked a chocolate cake in my mom’s memory.

  • Someone likes the center

My husband and I both got haircuts for the first time in over a year, too. Woo hoo! We celebrated with a date night at home and streamed the excellent production of the Lantern Theater’s production of Measure for Measure. It was a filmed production from a few years ago. The play is very timely. We watched the movie, Promising Young Woman, (rental from Amazon), which my husband and I both enjoyed and thought was very good—great acting, direction, and soundtrack. Both play and movie will inspire discussion.

Such Stuff

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Odilon Redon, “Flower Clouds”

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on”
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.

We soar past sleep,
stop to eat

the stars—swallow as they glide,
we abide

outside and within–
of such stuff, our dreams begin

to flutter-float, winging high
to fly upon some glittery boat

then with a quivery sigh,
they drift away, whispering goodbye.

A quadrille for dVerse. Lisa is hosting and asks us to use the word, “abide.”

Castaway

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Image Credit: © Sally Cronin

 

“We all were sea-swallow’d, though some cast again,

And by that destiny to perform an act

Whereof what’s past is prologue,”

–William Shakespeare, The Tempest

 

 

Castaway,

the tide brings treasures

lost at sea,

and found–

we begin again

 

find magic

in ordinary things,

discover beauty

and hold life in woven strands–

fated patterns of past and future.

 

A gogyohka sequence for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday—photo prompt using the photo above by Sally Cronin, and also linking this to dVerse Open Link Night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, To Love, NaPoWriMo

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IMG_7239

Well, to love

in that time of year

when spring fancy turns to summer heat

and to love well and sweet

that which is young and sleek,

simmering with fire-passion, consume

the green with new-sprung bloom.

Yet, autumn’s color also bursts

in fiery hues,

and glows diffused

in russet-gold glimmer, behold–

till twilight turns it dark and midnight tolled.

Still, there’s no wrong in loving strong

and right in loving well and loving long.

 

Day 27 of NaPoWriMo asks us “to ‘remix’ a Shakespearean sonnet.” Busy day for me,  so this is a quick fourteen line, non-sonnet, riffing on Sonnet LXXIII.

 

Telling the Story

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Monday Morning Musings:

“Go out and tell the story.

Let it echo far and wide.

Make them hear you.

Make them hear you.

How that justice was our battle and how justice

Was denied.

Make them hear you.

Make them hear you.”

— from Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, “Let Them Hear You,” Ragtime

 

“Our children

See them running down the beach

Children run so fast

Toward the future

From the past”

–from Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, “Our Children,” Ragtime

 

 

Dawn comes to tell the story

of the day,

the sun rising, a fact, or perhaps allegory

of what might be,

but at dawn we still have to wait and see

what will unfold over the hours

wait and behold, to see if it’s sweet,

or if it sours.

Will there be light and flowers,

or angry tears of raging showers?

 

We travel over the cool bridge*

Commodore Barry Bridge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

listening to the voice we’ve named Siobhan,

she guides us to our destination

no hesitation

on her part

though we wonder as she directs

us to wander,

and ponder

at her choices—but she gets us there.

And it’s where we want to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a hot day,

but fine if we stay

in the shade

and made

more pleasant

by costumed musicians playing flute

and a stringed instrument—but not a lute–

Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

so, we munch

our lunches, listening, as we crunch

and enjoy this day–

wait for more of what it has to say.

Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a day of protests,

and I am thankful for those who brave the heat

trying to fight and unseat

the evil—so obvious–that is being done

with children in cages, rights that were won

being stripped away–

a new horror every day–

evil has become commonplace,

even while it’s made banal

(build that wall, he still says

this excrescence, the prez)

And we sway in the breezes of change

wanting to blink and look away

but hoping still

it will go our way–

this story of our days.

 

So, we see this play,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a musical, and I’m amazed

at the way

it’s so timely today–

full of immigrants fleeing

and wanting the American dream

though things are not always the way they seem,

as white women are awakened to life beyond their homes

and people of color

striving for rights and equality,

though there is no apology

for the discrimination, only denial

without fair trial

or justice–

And, ok, I get choked up

when Sarah runs down to meet Coalhouse

even though I knew it was coming

and it’s possible I was crying by the end

of the story—I won’t pretend—

it’s true,

I was moved by the magic of theater,

perhaps you would have been, too.

 

It might seem funny that we see

this musical, not a Shakespearean play

at a festival named for the bard,

Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but it’s not hard

to understand

the popularity of musicals.

But he wrote of current events and history

and it’s no mystery

that his plays would have been performed with song–

perhaps the audience hummed along

to some familiar tunes.

Though all the female roles then were played by men,

well, things go around and around again

(Remember when we saw a woman play Hamlet’s role?

Gender no longer is the control.)

 

We ask Siobhan to guide us home

where we feed our cats,

(upset at being left alone)

wait for the sun to set

and the moon to rise,

wait for people to hear the babies’ cries

to set the course of things to where they should be,

where children are free,

not locked away, torn from their parents’ arms

but instead, quite naturally, kept safe from harm.

And by and by

the stars twinkle and sigh,

sing to us a lullaby.

I make a wish by candle light

for wisdom to come—perhaps tonight,

I’ll tell the stories of truth and right

and wait for some to listen,

Can I make them hear me?

I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

 

*Our children–actually their stuffed animal friends–named the Commodore Barry Bridge, “the Cool Bridge.

I’ve listened to the music of the musical Ragtime–and in fact, one summer I listened to it so often in the car that I pretty much had it memorized. But I had never before seen the show. This was a wonderful production with Broadway actors with great voices (and some fortunate DeSales students filling in some of the ensemble roles). It was very well-staged and the costumes were great, too.

Here’s Brian Stokes Mitchell singing, “Let Them Hear You.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fair and Foul and Fair

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Monday Morning Musings:

“So fair and foul a day I have not seen.”

–William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, Scene 3

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

–William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5

“A library is infinity under a roof.”

—Gail Carson Levine

 

I lust for language–

a thousand symphonies play in my head

like light on water, ripples tripling

the glowing

flowing,

sending words, like spindrift into the sky

never lies,

but truth amplified.

I see the storms of summer spring

and hear the mockingbird sing

in night and day

he stays–

wanting love and standing guard

his tiny body working hard.

I feel

(ever present)

the ghosts around me sighing

and do they fear

from year to year

what was and what will be?

The circling of time

and life beating

(so fleeting),

but renewed again and again.

 

We walk through galleries

and by the river

(life giver)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

flowing through a city that has grown

built with wood, and bricks, and stone,

a nation conceived, and ideas flown

(now people find them on their phones).

But still—here they are gathered

scattered on grass

biking, running,

or rowing, sun-glimmered,

forward and back

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

like time

(the Muse says)–

they’re in their prime

now

in this clime

the moment frozen in a thought

or captured in a rhyme

but before long

they will be gone.

 

Museums and libraries

I celebrate–

spread my books out on a table

enabling those who pass to see them better

West Deptford Public Library Book Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to read the letters and titles

though mine don’t sell

people stop by to wish me well

and support the work I do—

telling the truth

when some others seldom do.

 

We go out later to drink some wine

and dine in the open air

Sharrott Winery, Hammonton, NJ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the day turns fair, then foul, then fair

where birds flutter and fly

and children cry

with delight

running in fields in the fading light.

 

We see the Scottish play

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

on a cooler day–

then again it moves from foul to fair

threatening skies to a more spring-like air.

But inside this grand library

Free Library of Philadelphia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

something wicked this way comes

though there are only two witches instead of three

(something in this version that bothered me).

Yet the acting is good, and the Macbeths

both powerful and vulnerable

to fate

that they help to make.

As the drum beats. and the swords fly

time in the theater passes by,

and tales from another age verify

the universals truths of humankind

(though this production streamlined),

all the tomorrows,

and the yesterdays,

the sound and the fury,

our vision often blurry

during our brief stay—

and yet we find a way

with stories and art

to share our hearts.

 

Once we had leaders who valued art

and learning,

understood the yearning to know

truth and beauty.

It is our duty

then to spread such ideas,

no matter what he says

and they believe

the false faces and words

that constantly deceive.

Yes, the storm is coming

and let it blow

away the discordant tunes

and the starless nights

for bright humming moons

and radiant light.

 

Sister Cities Fountain