The Merger

                                 Brenda Bryant 

SHADOW SHOT
http://heyharriet.blogspot.com/2010/07/shadow-shot-sunday-112.html

WEEKEND REFLECTION
http://newtowndailyphoto.blogspot.com/2010/07/trolls-view-weekend-reflections-42.html

THE MERGER

Where does shadow end?

Reflection.... where does that begin?

When a shadow is a reflection,

Which is going to win?

The table is a mirror

For the bowl that we see here,

But if it were not reflective,

A shadow would appear.

The sky we see reflected,

There's no doubt about that,

And the room's reflected in the bowl

Looking round instead of flat.

But the bowl has a shadow-reflection

Or so it seems to me.

Passing by a table

It's surprising what you see!

*

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                             Arthur Hughes

THE SOURCE

Witness the lovely Ophelia, there by the riverside.

We all know how she pined for Hamlet and how, in the river, she died.

We see her planning her drowning, gazing down at the water's flow,

Agonising over Hamlet and doomed to the water below.

Screed upon screed has been written of her heart-breaking love-affair.

Artists have thrilled to the vision of her flowing still-lovely hair

Floating along in the river, framing her still-calm face,

But Katherine preceded Ophelia, and, of her, there isn't a trace!

Shakespeare was just a young fellow of sixteen or so it is said,

When a girl from a nearby village was found in the river, dead.

The drowning was seen as a mystery; the girl had a lover, it's true,

And the gossips spoke of a broken heart, as gossips often do.

She was only a humble creature, maybe a lowly maid,

And she was carrying buckets, part of her stock-in-trade.

Finally, it was decided that accidental death

Had caused her to fall in the river, and take her final breath.

Maybe she overbalanced, or tripped on a rock by chance,

But the rumours always persisted as a story of romance.

Shakespeare was young and dreamy; he thought of the girl, no doubt,

And. as a man, it's rumoured, he let the story out.

'Katherine' became a lady of noble and royal birth,

Far removed from peasantry and the toil of the common earth.

Shakespeare 'created' Ophelia, immortalised her history;

Imbued her with grand yearnings and an air of eternal mystery.

No-one knows, for certain, that this was Shakespeare's source,

And no-one ever will know at this late stage, of course.

The uncertainty about it must be underlined.

But the girl's name was

KATHERINE HAMLET

So make up your own mind!

*