Now I’m talkin’ like a fairy. Or a poet.
I’m anthropomorphizing the moon
Sending it walking over dewy hills
Dressed in red robes.
One night with a ghost and I turn poetic.
In an instant.
This makes sense, though, right?
After an enormous shock, you do
See things differently
The branches of a tree stand out
The smell of wild grasses strikes you
When it hasn’t before
You see the circular math of roses.
What is a poem but a close –up on a moment
A close up, like a camera
But with words.
A poem amplifies
Or miniaturizes
Those things that might otherwise disappear into the scene.
It is that one blade of grass
The one bending toward you like a courtier
Heaving under a dew drop.
It is that moon, dressed in reddish brown
Gliding over a hill.

Horatio’s in it now.
From fortified against their story
To believing in witches, fairies and ghosts
In part, though,
Only in part.
Which part is it, I wonder?
Ghosts, clearly, since he’s just seen one
And tried to charm it somehow –
But what else?
Is Horatio changing his religion as we watch?
From stoic to pagan
Or Atheist to Christian?
The disruption of logic in a logical world
Is more chaotic
Than chaos added to chaos.

This sentence doesn’t make much sense, Horatio.
Is he saying that what they just saw
Tested the hypothesis he just stated?
Sure is a funny way to say that, Horatio.
Are you a lawyer? Are you a scientist?
Well – you are an academic –
Maybe you get used to arcane syntax and using more words
Than necessary.
This present object? Are you referring to
The ghost?
Is he the present object?
Or the rooster?
Maybe I’m a little slow
But it seems like a funny time
To start talking like a lawyer.
Upon the disappearance of a ghost
That I didn’t believe in a few minutes ago,
I’m pretty sure I’d be pulling out the vowels
The Oh
The Wow
The Wha?
“And of the truth herein, this present object made probation?”
Come on.

Who is this god of day?
Does he hang with Phoebus Apollo
Or Ra in Egypt?
I picture him as bright and sunny,
Rubbing his godly great eyes
As the rooster crows,
Ready to rule over his dominion.
What does he do if he sees the dark spirits
Hanging around after a good night’s haunting?
Does he chase them into corners?
Reduce them to ash?
Make them writhe in agony of the brightness of the morning?
Luckily, it probably takes a little while
for the god of morning to roll over
the lip of his bed
into the full force of his power.
The tardy spirit may have a moment or two
To secret himself into the vanishing darkness.

Later in this play
Another king will start
Like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons.
Well, upon a play
Upon a theme.
This other king
Will echo the first
In more ways than one.
He will echo him
In love
In war
In craving revenge
Echoes upon echoes
Reverberating throughout
Starting and summoning.