The art of Andrew Hayes

SUNNI BROWN WILKINSON

April 23, 2020 and Today Is Shakespeare’s Birthday

and it’s raining, a grand gray opening to the day, the bucolic dramas unfolding in the grass, in the nest, in our own humming houses. Another friend’s heart broken, and starcrossed trees throw their white confetti over the budding peonies. All of us are masked now, playing a part, not quite sure of our lines but the rhythm like our heartbeats leads us on. All the world’s a stage and the play must go on despite fresh graves, all the Yorricks we have loved, the great monologue of death rolling through the evening news, armies of us lurching to the store to Home Depot, lost but gathering seeds, flowers, like Ophelia: daisies for innocence we’ve lost, violets for our faithfulness in dark times, rosemary for remembrance of what we once were, still want to be. At the throne, our own mad king, a Lear still loving the wrong daughters, the crude, threatening tirades, and yet life is still a miracle. Here on my lawn quail chase through wet grass.

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