Opening Book: Three Haiku Page 73

Opening Book: Spring Lyric Page 40

Opening Book: My Bridge is like a Rainbow Page 34-38

Opening Book: Prologue to a Play by Thomas Holcroft Page 31-32

[The title says it all. I was invited to write this prologue for a performance by the director and lead actor of Holcroft’s A Tale of Mystery. I no longer remember the actor’s name. I wish I did. If memory serves, the play was not written in heroic couplets or any kind of verse, but I thought writing the prologue this way would set it apart. Much of the subject matter, and even the wording, comes straight from a book on the history of Salem during this period. (I don’t remember the name of the book but found it locally.)

All I did was to versify the book’s prose (changing the prose to rhyming iambic pentameter). Shakespeare used to do this with his own plays – the most famous examples being from Antony & Cleopatra – in which he versified whole passages from Plutarch. If I had it to do again, I probably wouldn’t put this in my book. The couplet: “I only tell it now because it’s sad/ To see what’s good so easily go bad” is execrable. If spoken the way it should be (the actor reading the prologue was the villain of the play), the couplet might come off as humorously trite and mean-spirited – the way it was meant to be.  ]

Opening Book: Spider Spider Page 30

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Opening Book: The Fox Watches the Moon Page 27-28

Opening Book: (Two Haiku) “a Ways to fall” & Ohio Page 25

Opening Book: Zen & Four Crows Page 24

Opening Book: After Chaos Page 21-22

Opening Book: And I am never… Page 20