A Deep River Year
April 23,  2014

Today is William Shakespeare's birthday, a date kept by convention because nobody knows exactly when he was born.    He died on April 23, too, an odd fact that I learned in high school English literature class--one of those peculiar things that takes up residence in your head even though it 's hard to work into conversations at dinner parties.   However, we should give thanks for Shakespeare, and for his signature written across all of Western culture.   He gave us the glory of words, and the glory of an imagination that captures the very essence of humanity--its heights and its depths--in poems and plays that shall endure to the end of civilization.    Today, to honor his legacy, I am going down to the steps of our Town Hall and read all 154 of his sonnets, a manageable feat compared to reading all the plays.   

Still, I hope that my voice holds out.    This body of flesh, like all humans', will give out long before the words of Shakespeare.   And here, in these sweet days of April, I want to sing a "Hey nonino" like the Bard's lover and lass walking across Spring's green fields.   Because in the passage of years, our days become all the more precious.  They are to be held, cherished, sung.   Shakespeare reminds us that soon this abounding life will fade, giving way to autumn's "bare ruined choirs" and the twilight years of "death's second self."     So, he concludes,   "This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,/    To love that well which thou must leave ere long."    And we do feel this love, and every Spring its sweetness seems to grow more strong as our time on this tender planet ticks away.

Last week I visited an elderly acquaintance whose remaining Aprils are numbered.    She greeted me with joy and a contagious laugh, and held out her aging hands to display an array of artwork on her fingernails.   "Look at my nails," she beamed.   "For Easter!"    They were pastels, green and yellow and blue, and two were decorated with rabbits.   We laughed together, glad that some joys are ageless.   There is still a fire in us, old and young.   It is sometimes banked in the corner's of our soul's hearth, coals gone cold from neglect or from the long accumulation of sorrows.   But the embers burn and wait for a breath to raise them to life.   A few daffodils may do it, or the smell of rain, or sunlight on the river, or the violets erupting in a barren meadow.   Or, who knows, love itself may yet smile  through those bare ruined choirs, fill our hearts, make us paint our nails and  read some Shakespeare on April 23.  Hey ding a ding, ding!

Easter Hands

I would hold this day,
tight in my aching grasp,
made weaker by the unfeeling years
as they wear this body toward dust.
I would hold this Spring
in Easter hands,
sink them deep into the turned earth,
run these fingers through long grass,
raise them to catch the sky,
or hold in them some wondrous seed
where life is hidden away,
a sentient spirit caught until the dark
enfolds it, and then the rain
calls it to find its morning.
I would hold today
in Easter hands,
until the bones and flesh go limp at last,
and then I would give back
the wonders that they always held,
give them again to the spring
where lovers come to drink,
give back the joy, the fire,
give back the golden blossom
of this one and treasured life.

--Timothy Haut, April 23, 2014