Opposite Day with Will Shakespeare

Shakespeare wins, local poet learns things

Photo by Taha on Unsplash

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So … how did we get here? More on that in a minute. First, though, here we are.

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SONNET LXXIII                                                   Pub. 1609
By William Shakespeare


That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

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NOT SONNET LXXIII                                                      2026


You do not see in me the hidden Now
when plumping roots reach, ever-branching, deep
into the soil that softens in spring rain,
rich seeded loam, revived from arid clay.
You do not see in me the gloaming dawn
that lights the eastern sky after dead night
and, fair, unfolds the pageant of bright day,
a morning’s Easter, hope’s awakening dance.
You do not see in me the kindling spark
that wakes the straw of youth into a blaze,
as on a hearth whose hidden embers kiss
all that they touch with fire and living flame.
You do not see; unseeing, turn away,
while I, unseen, add life to life each day.

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There I sat one morning with my notebook, not a notion in my head, restless with the want of something to write about. Mentally I listed writing games I’d had fun with in the past, including the Opposite Day exercise where you turn a line or a verse or the entirety of someone else’s poem inside out. The thought floated across my mind that you couldn’t do that with Shakespeare’s sonnet about his mistress’s eyes being nothing like the sun,¹ because that whole sonnet is an Opposite Day exercise (a fabulous one). So which other sonnet … ? Well, try a couple of lines of that one, why not.

Twenty minutes, two quatrains later: Huh. This is … not just an exercise, is it?

It was an exercise, and it worked a treat. As I went along, it also became something else: an Opposite Day love poem to quiet unpretty girls and quiet aging women who go right on living lives of astounding rootedness and renewal and fire, whether or not anyone — particularly, any man — can be bothered to notice them; a love poem to quietly magnificent lives being lived in plain sight, unseen. I may have been thinking about someone specific (don’t ask) when I wrote it. When you read it, someone specific may have crossed your mind.

Shakespeare wins, of course he does. He rhymes, and he got there first, and he’s Shakespeare for heaven’s sake. I don’t think he’d mind my borrowing his poem and turning it inside out, though. In fact, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t even notice. Which … well, see above. Then go have a day and a life, the one you most want to have, whether anybody else notices or not.

1. Sonnet 130.