N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 2

RANDY ROARK

The Sonnets (1592-1595)

The red glow of a manuscript in the fire,
red waves erasing everyone and everything
I’ve written on the page, stirring the embers,

restive, the ash drifts upward, as if life
was a riddle that must be puzzled out,
the way my face floats in a mirror

dreaming of things I’ve since forgotten,
not remembering what I was other than the writing,
the hills silvered-over, yellowed fields, the sun

reduced to an amethyst hung around my neck.
But to wear this world out to the end. Nothing
stands to the scythe as I do now.

[Excerpt from The Shakespeare Poems.]