SOUL OF THE AGE

Now, is the summer
of this. . .our content

made glorious
by love

the sunlight
kiss of leaves

yet through a glass
darkly

I am tolled by old
St. Saviour’s bell

back to
a December’d day

a Thames frozen
from Westminister to London Bridge

where Will
buries brother

young Edmund Shakespeare
on this the last day

of the year
1607.

I stand on the same
flagstones

as the King’s Men
gathered in black

rub shoulders with
Burbage

a Hamlet come
to life

a summer of tourists
walking through us

as the order
from the Book of the Dead

solemnly intoned

as his younger brother
is lowered

into an unmarked
grave.

Ferrymen call
from across the centuries

“Eastward **. . .
. . .Westward **!”

as Time slips
loose of its moorings

mastiffs strain
at the leash

await the bear
to be baited.

Methinks I see
the great Globe itself

flag unfurled
upon an horizon

“the forenoon knell
of the great bell”

as I return
to my self

and Shakespeare
stares at a wall

in Silver
Street.