Life should neither be some walking shadow,
nor a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.
Macbeth is wrong.
Life is prose and poetry
both embraced and intertwined,
and existence can endure beyond a given hour,
in our vestige of scribbled lines,
soft or hard,
to lighten shades
and even with shifting tides
keep otherwise fleeting footsteps pressed within the sand.
When strong hearts have ceased to beat,
or old wings raise us from this coil,
perchance an imprint of character lingers still
if only in one living thought.
Not nothing,
but instead an ideal,
a fable,
a dream perhaps,
for their enjoyment or as a guiding hand
even if told by fools,
and most certainly full of whispers
and clangs,
and no small amount of
madness.
Further yet, each bard's great prize,
to carve infinity in a row of words,
and share immortality
with the gods.
*Shakespeare's Macbeth, seasoned with a sprinkle of Hamlet and a pinch of Blake.