We’ll Need New Articles for Einstein, Too
(23 April 2024)
Is it
Today
That’s Shakespeare’s birthday
That is
The christening day
By record of
The fact of birth
And if a construct
Then a construct with some very good
Actual
Details
A birthplace
A church
Parents
All the poetry
For
A first reputation
And some munificence
With which
To fund
Some future
With
Plays
Also a theatre
That burned
Down
And that they could
Build a stage again
A favorite of the queen
And then the king
Respected
No doubt also scorned
For envy
By
Peers of verse
Especially
Also of drama
A family
And a burial
Back
At the church
Near the altar
As a deal
And after checking
Mini-eons later
To find the skull
That held
The face
The
Mind
Like Yorick
Isn’t there
(proving something
proving nothing
Macbeth-
like
sound and fury)
Maybe to be set aside
Become
Einstein
Someone whom
We’ll argue for
In the same way
For
For future
Academics’ sakes
C L Couch
n.b. (I think well)
My christening
By the way
Waited a year and
A half
Oh
No
Grist for more
Speculation
Photo by Dalton Smith on Unsplash
23 April 1564
(looked it up—twenty-three score years ago)
(x = space)
x
x
Very Tall Bill
x
My college roommate died
I saw a blurb in a newsletter
Then went to find an article
He was a teacher
A theatrician
William Kennedy, Ph.D.
Known as Bill to most
And to me
He was a good guy
In the way that guys
That people
Can be good
He was ill
How badly I did not know
I guess the illness took him
At the last
His brother is survived
I knew him some
I knew Bill better
And sometimes wondered
What a pair
So oddly matched
His six-foot and a half frame
(I never really knew
the measurement)
My five-nine
Walking somewhere
At school
And the day we dared
Walk on the grass
Against a rule
To play some Frisbee
x
I am sad
Through and through,
It seems
So as if to feel numb
For a while, now
God take and keep Bill
Teaching
Writing plays
Making productions for
Heaven’s revue
I trust
There is Dad’s Root Beer there
In the green room
At the cast party
x
C L Couch
x
Bill taught and wrote, directed plays for decades in his scholarly, professorial career.
x
x
Comedy and Tragedy masks from the Princess Theatre, Decatur, Alabama
image by Marjorie Kaufman
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38298189
x
Western Movie Theatre in Oxford, Ohio
There was a summer when
I felt especially alone
I was at school
Everyone else was gone
So I went to the movies
Two dollars for admission
For two dollars, I saw The Last Starfighter
Then on another night, Highlander
Music by Queen
Sci-fi reigned, I guess
Taking me somewhere I wasn’t,
Which at the time was really
Needful like coal
For an empty furnace
It’s no longer there
The theatre or the summer
I got an X from the marquee
Before everything shut down
C L Couch
By Michael Gäbler, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31083077
Rodgers Theatre in Poplar Bluff in Missouri. This Art Deco-style theater opened in 1949.
clcouch123 
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