Will

 

I watch him, hunched in candlelight,
parchment crinkled with the might
of the written word that flows,
like magic, from his quill.

A butcher boy, and then he taught,
but something deep inside him fought
to express the things he saw, and
I often wondered how it was
that my man became a gentleman,
though I worry not, for what’s the point?

Then sonnets, plays, and much good verse,
he wrote to fill an empty purse.

He writes of kings, and plots, and blood,
expressions pouring forth to flood
the mind of all who go to see
Will Shakespeare, as he ought to be –
a player of that stage called life.

And who am I? Why, just his wife!

Written 2009. Published with Poetry.com, 2013.