Shakespeare's Sonnet #5

{Callie's Version} plus, a live reading this weekend!

Those hours that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o’er-snowed and bareness everywhere.
Then, were not summer’s distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.
 But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet,
 Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.

-William Shakespeare

Never-resting time leads summer on
and the rest of us, too. Chlorine and sun,
watermelon, and smoke off the grill and Prom
tempt us to look back to days that are done.
The maize dandelions in the backyard,
once were wands of magic and play are now
weeds to be plucked and tamed and not starred
on the cheeks of children we once were. How
is it that once she was in an Elmo
bikini? Her diaper sagging; belly out.
Now, she lies on the deck listening to
The Grapes of Wrath while the sun's spout
drops onto her face and limbs. What liquid
prisoner? Show me (my) beauty distilled.

I have the pleasure of reading a poem of mine, “Three Times I’ve Heard A Rainbow” this Saturday evening at 5pm at First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. Come join us!