Arise

Arise all ye characters of the Globe!
Play out your inward lives for all to see!
Your shrouded secrets publicly disrobe!
Naked, Shakespeare thus gave life to thee.
Kings and rascals loosed upon the stage
in treacherous villainy and Love’s sweet scope,
where thund’rous Tempers, Tempests, Heavens rage
and tragedies and fears contend with hope.
Is there an untamed author writing free,
who moves in us and in whose motion
sets us on the world, personality
afire, heaving with emotion
marveling at a strange and wondrous birth
and if something dire we have yet to do on earth?

Still Here

Death is a closed door.
No one can open it.
Not even the dead, apparently.

There is no Orpheus to sing them through the gates,
no Eurydice to look back upon in anguished wonder.

Are those on the other side
resting in perfect oblivion?

Or are those on the other side
engulfed in an unimaginable darkness,
shorn of all senses
left to wander in maddening solitude?

Or do those on the other side
stand in the pure light of Goodness?
Do they bang on the door,
frantically waving their arms,
shouting out warnings,
desperate to get our attention?

Or do those on the other side
stand in the pure light of Love,
weeping for us, as we weep for them,
reaching out to us, yearning to touch
our wracked and grieving hearts,
willing us to weep for every earthly being
as we would weep for our own
mothers, fathers, sons or daughters?

Or do those on the other side
stand in the pure light of Serenity
unjudging and unjudged?
Do they not stand before the same soul-stretching stars
as we, before the same surging seas,
before the same heaving hills and voluptuous valleys,
do they not hear the same sonorous songbirds

exultantly crying to the morning:
“Listen! After the long night, I am still here!”

Norman Solowey is a graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in psychology. He writes poetry to explore the deep mysteries of existence and for the sheer joy of creating. His wife, daughters and grandchildren are the center of his universe. His work has appeared in The Lyric. He lives, loves and writes in Lake Monticello, Virginia.