Sonnettics

The maple sap flows every March you see
Some years it's just a little, some alot
The winter freezes sap, the spring sets free
We tap our trees to see how much we've got
Our trees are “breathing” maple, freeze and thaw
That's how the sap arises through the wood
This year we tap the trees then watch in awe
With thanks the sap is flowing pretty good
The sugarhouses fill with maple’s sap
Takes forty gallons sap to make one sweet
That difference is quite a hefty gap
Who cares! It makes my pancakes nice to eat
At Hebron’s Maple Festival, I’m told
We celebrate our liquid maple gold!

This sonnet was submitted to an online journal and received a nearly instant rejection:

Dear Scott Ennis,

Sonnet received, but I can tell you now that it will not find a place on The Sonnet Scroll/Poetry Porch.

Do you have others that you might submit?

Joyce Wilson, Editor

How fitting, that the page is clean and white
I’ll try my best to stain it carefully
I don’t think it will hurt, but then it might
Is pain the way to tell the words they’re free?

Dichotomous, the sonnet is a cage
A prison made of fourteen bars of verse
A metaphor that marks the virgin page
The virgin sonnet could be something worse

Imagine if the words became a song
A lyric made of thin iambic flesh
A page that’s torn, that’s neither right nor wrong
Within a book that functions as a creche

A virgin sonnet only til it’s read
A couplet to replace the maidenhead.

The billionaire wanted immortality, but he wanted it priced correctly.

Paintings were too fungible, yachts too wet, and buildings too full of other people’s names. Words, though—words could be made rare. So he announced, over lunch on a terrace above the city, that he would commission the most expensive sonnet ever written. 

One million dollars per line. Fourteen lines. A monument of cash and cadence.

They found him a sonneteer living quietly in a rent-controlled apartment, someone whose poems were admired in whispers and reviewed with qualifiers. The sonneteer listened, nodded once, and asked only to be paid as the poem progressed. The billionaire, amused, agreed.

The first quatrain arrived handwritten on thick paper. It spoke of time, ambition, and men who tried to purchase permanence. The billionaire read it twice, pleased, and transferred four million dollars.

The second quatrain followed, tighter, sharper, turning the poem inward. Power became weight; wealth became gravity. Another four million dollars changed hands.

The third quatrain took longer. During that delay, markets shuddered. When it finally arrived, the stanza was mercilessly beautiful, suggesting that excess itself was a kind of blindness. The billionaire paid another four million dollars, pride now sharing space with unease.

Then the crash came.

Accounts froze mid-transaction. Valuations revised themselves downward until they meant nothing at all. When the billionaire finally reached the sonneteer, there was a pause on the line long enough to feel like calculation.

He could not afford what remained of the poem.

“A sonnet,” the sonneteer said gently, “ends with a couplet.”

The billionaire looked at the twelve flawless lines before him—each one purchased, each one certain. He could not bear to leave the poem unfinished. So he declined the final commission and picked up a pen himself.

He wrote the last two lines late at night. They obeyed the rules without understanding them. They rhymed, but only just. When set beneath the others, the poem closed, but imperfectly, like a door made to measure for someone else.

Later readers would marvel at the brilliance of the opening twelve lines, then hesitate at the end, sensing the change in voice, the thinning of insight.

And there, in the couplet he could not buy, the billionaire left his truest signature: the moment money lost its meter.

The tree of yule reminds us that the year
Is just a cycle; light and warmth return
We honor it with festive songs and cheer
A sacred symbol everyone should learn

The evergreen we celebrate today
Is evergreen in dark or cold or night
It marks the hope that we might always stay
Within the warmth we feel beneath the light

The light of solstice, lingering and warm
The warmth returns, the evergreen reveals
That all may last in strength through winter’s storm
Let’s celebrate the time the solstice heals

We’ll mark the day for everything it means
Symbolically displayed wiith evergreens.

Divinity assumes you’re not divine
As if there’s something else you must become
Come show me yours and I will show you mine
The essence that exists where God is from

But wait, we know that God is everywhere
Divinity, like God, is out there too
And yet within as well, ok, that’s fair
Within, without, we’re God, both me and you

Breathe in and know that God has filled your chest
With life that touches everything you feel
Perception is divinity at best
Exhale and feel it shatter every seal

Divinity’s already what you are
A lump of flesh and yet a shining star.

Although the brass is broken from its frame,
the reed remembers breath it could not keep.
It hums in silence, whispering the same
long truth that moves the cosmos in its sleep.

For nothing sings alone; the world must pass
through metal, flesh, or memory to sound.
One breath becomes a choir in reed or grass,
one pulse becomes the heartbeat of the ground.

I grok the reed: its stillness mirrors mine;
its trembling waits within my open hand.
We are two notes the universe designed
from star-forged dust and wind across the land.

Thus-Thou art God—the music, not the claim—
the breath that moves us, nameless yet the same.

A SONNETTICS CYCLE
Fourteen Sonnets in Sequence

I. Magdala

The Tower / Origin

Magdala raised her silhouette in sand,
A harbor stone where fishing nets were cast;
From this strong place she rose to understand
How towers root the future in the past.
She carried in her stance a quiet height,
A fortitude the storms could never drown;
Her steps were steady, drawn toward deeper light,
Her mind a lantern moving through the town.
Before the teachings and the breaking bread,
Before the garden dawn or empty cave,
She walked as one whose lifted heart was led
By something more than what the world could save.
Her name became the tower she would be—
A rise of spirit set beside the sea.

II. The Seven Troubles

Healing and Release

She carried seven troubles in her chest,
Each one a shadow knotted to her breath;
They named them demons, but no heart can rest
When grief and terror press it close to death.
He saw the weight she bore without disguise,
The quiet tremor tucked beneath her name;
He spoke, and something cleared behind her eyes—
A lifting wind, a small, extinguished flame.
No spectacle, no thunder split the air;
Just one restoring silence, deeply cast,
That let her draw a fuller breath and dare
To step beyond the wounds that held her fast.
Her troubles loosened, falling one by one,
And in their absence rose a waking sun.

III. Patron of the Ministry

Her Financial Support

She walked beside the Twelve with steady grace,
Not as a shadow trailing in their stride,
But as a tower moving into place—
A strength they leaned on more than they implied.
From Magdala her earned and honest store
Sustained the hungry circle as it grew;
She opened wide her means, and even more,
She opened wide her heart to what was true.
Her gifts were quiet—bread and coin and care—
Yet through her hands the teacher’s path held firm;
Without her, many steps would fade to air,
Their weary hopes too fragile to affirm.
Thus ministry was borne on what she gave:
A woman funding light the world would crave.

IV. Faithful Follower

Discipleship on the Road

She chose the road that wound through dust and heat,
Where teachings rose like dawn along the way;
She matched her steps to his, her heartbeat’s beat
Aligned with every truth he came to say.
Not pulled by law nor pushed by public claim,
But drawn by something quiet, fierce, and clear—
A recognition deeper than a name,
A trust that grew with every passing year.
She learned the dust’s communion with the feet,
The cadence of the journey’s living call;
For faith is not a resting place, but beat
By beat, the choosing of the path withal.
Thus following, she made her witness known:
A disciple walking where the truth had flown.

V. The Holy Kiss

Ritual Transmission and Recognition

He greeted all with peace upon the cheek,
A blessing shaped in breath and offered light;
But when he turned to her, the act grew deep,
A ciphered grace that opened hidden sight.
For in that kiss, no romance sought its claim—
It was the teacher’s seal, the soul’s release;
A giving of his knowledge through her name,
A quiet joining shaped by ancient peace.
The others saw and questioned what it meant,
Yet she received it with untroubled mind;
For in that touch, a wordless sacrament
Passed on the wisdom few are meant to find.
Thus kissed, she bore a deeper flame within—
A truth bestowed before the world grew dim.

VI. Voice of the Hidden Teachings

Insight Beyond the Spoken Word

She listened not for sound but for the thread
That ran beneath his sayings, fine and long;
She caught the meanings others left unread,
The undertones that turned belief to song.
Where silence shaped a chamber for the wise,
She entered with a calm, discerning mind;
Her questions rose like lanterns in the skies,
Revealing pathways others could not find.
He trusted her to ask the truer things—
The shadows cast by spirit, flesh, and fire;
And in her voice, the hidden teaching rings,
A depth no envy ever could retire.
Thus wisdom found in her a dwelling place,
A listening soul attuned to inward grace.

VII. Contested Authority

The Peter Conflict

She spoke, and silence shifted in the room;
Her insight stirred where others held their ground.
But some, unnerved, foretold a harsher doom
If wisdom wore a woman’s form unbound.
Peter, uncertain how her voice could rise
Beside his own with equal weight and fire,
Demanded proof that heaven would advise
Such teaching drawn from one they called “desire.”
Yet she stood firm, untroubled by their doubt—
For truth requires no shield of rank or fame;
It speaks, and lesser tempers burn themselves out,
Dimmed by the steadiness from which it came.
Thus she became the answer to their fear:
A woman bearing wisdom’s helm without a peer.

VIII. Witness at the Cross

Steadfast in the Shadow of Death

When fear drove many hearts away from sight,
She stayed, a quiet ember in the storm;
She held her place beside the failing light,
A tower keeping vigil in its form.
The hammer struck, the sky dissolved to black,
The world unmade itself upon the wood;
Yet none could turn her steadfast spirit back—
She saw the sorrow, and she understood.
For love is not escape from suffering,
But standing where the breaking must occur;
She braced herself beneath the darkening,
A faithful soul no terror could deter.
She watched the final breath he came to give,
And with that watching chose again to live.

IX. Tender of the Tomb

The Dawn Spicer

Before the sun could rise and color stone,
She carried spices through the waking gloom;
No thought of fear, no hesitation known—
Only her need to honor him in tomb.
The world was cold, the garden still as glass,
Each step a vow she made with quiet pain;
Yet through the hush she felt her courage pass
Like breath restored to something lost again.
She sought no miracle, no lifted gate,
No promise that the dead would rise at dawn;
She only came because her love was great,
A final blessing for a life withdrawn.
Thus dawn first saw her tending what she kept—
A grief that walked, a faith that never slept.

X. The Weeping Seeker

Tears that Blur and Reveal

She wept beside the stone that sealed her fear,
Her tears a river cutting through the clay;
She called his name, but silence drew too near,
A shadow where her hope had slipped away.
Yet in those tears, a clearer sight was born—
For through their blur, the veil began to lift;
Her sorrow, though unmeasured and forlorn,
Prepared her heart to recognize the gift.
Sometimes the waters rising from the soul
Are not undoing, but a doorway made;
They wash the dust from what grief would control,
Revealing light beneath the paling shade.
Her tears became the lens through which she saw—
A seeker shaped by love, not by the law.

XI. The Garden Encounter

Recognition: “Mary.”

She turned, and thought he was the gardener there,
A keeper tending blossoms with the dawn;
But when he spoke her name, the very air
Became the place where all her doubt was gone.
No sermon ever matched that single word—
No argument, no sign, no breath of scroll;
In saying “Mary,” something deeper stirred,
A truth that reached the marrow of her soul.
Recognition does not come by sight,
But by the tone that knows us from within;
One whispered name can bring the dead to light,
Can raise the heart from where its fears have been.
Thus resurrection found its first acclaim
In nothing more than hearing her own name.

XII. Noli Me Tangere

The Un-clinging

She reached for him, her grief reversing course,
Her hands recalling what her heart had lost;
But he, in love, withheld the earthly force
That clinging claims, where spirit pays the cost.
“Do not hold on,” he said, for love must grow
Beyond the grasp of what the flesh can bind;
The path ahead was one she had to know
In trust, not touch—through clarity of mind.
The living cannot linger with the dead,
Nor can the risen dwell in holding fast;
Love asks us not to freeze what has been said,
But follow where the promised truth is cast.
She let him go, and in that letting saw
A faith that rose beyond her earthly law.

XIII. Apostle to the Apostles

Her Commission

She ran with breath unbroken by her tears,
A message rising faster than her stride;
The world had shifted from its ancient gears,
And she alone first held what death denied.
“Alive!”—her voice became the dawn’s first cry,
A proclamation none could hold in place;
She bore the tidings time could not defy,
A herald marked by resurrection’s grace.
Though some dismissed the witness she became,
Her truth outshone their disbelief and pride;
For nothing could eclipse the living flame
Of news delivered by the one who’d cried.
Thus history bends to her resounding word:
She spoke, and all creation’s pulse was stirred.

XIV. Restoration of Her Name

Undoing the False Legacy

Long centuries obscured her rightful part,
Confusing penance with the life she led;
They cast her as a fallen, fractured heart
Instead of one who walked where wisdom spread.
But truth endures beneath the weight of years,
And slowly rose to claim its proper frame;
Her witness, clear through sorrow, grace, and tears,
Returned to shine unshadowed by false shame.
Now once again her story stands upright—
A tower rising where the tides retreat;
Her name restored from rumor into light,
Her steps remembered for their steady beat.
Thus Mary walks again in honored flame,
A saint of love—restored to her true name.

Premiere at The Tank in NYC

https://thetanknyc.org/calendar-1/gone-in-60-seconds-nyc-one-minute-theatre-festival

The Joke’s on Me
A one-minute existential play
Characters:
Ophelia – Reflective, dryly amused by her fate.
Yorick – The ever-wise fool, both guide and provocateur.
Setting:
 A liminal afterlife—vast, empty, yet oddly intimate. A single bench. Ophelia sits, wringing the water from her gown. Yorick leans against nothing in particular, grinning.

OPHELIA: Tell me, Yorick—was I mad, or was the world?

YORICK: (thoughtful) That depends. Do you prefer to be tragic or merely ridiculous?

OPHELIA: Ridiculous, I think. There’s freedom in it. Madness is such a heavy thing to carry.

YORICK: Oh, then you were utterly absurd. The prince loved you, until he didn’t. Your father shielded you, until he used you. And you, poor maid, floated prettily away—like punctuation at the end of a sentence.

OPHELIA: A comma or a period?

YORICK: An ellipsis, I think. A drowning ellipsis… trailing off mid-thought.

OPHELIA: Fitting. I always did feel unfinished. (beat) But tell me, was I real? Or just a plot device?

YORICK: Oh, real enough to drown, but not real enough to swim.

OPHELIA: (smirks) And that is the joke, isn’t it? I was shaped by everyone’s will but my own.

YORICK: (bows) The grandest absurdity of all: you were never given a choice, yet somehow, your tragedy was called inevitable.

OPHELIA: (laughs softly) And what do we call that? Fate?

YORICK: No, my dear. Theater.

Lights fade. End.

I watched her disappear in songs of smoke
I thought she’d be the one to prove them wrong
But breath is only life until you choke
And brilliance fell to shadow in her song
She moved through rooms like rumor, half-believed
A trailing laugh, a shadow at the door
I’d turn to speak, but find myself deceived
Her voice remained; her motive was impure
She danced on coals and called it poetry
Mistook the glow for grace of ashen youth
Her exit staged in careful tragedy
A burned out lie she passed off as the truth
Let smoke recall her, beautiful, unwise
A flash that sang of air and smoky lies

A little one act play I wrote a few years ago. It was selected to be produced for a competition, but the production company wanted more of my time than I had to spare. Let me know if you'd like to produce it.

Washed Up
by
Scott Ennis

Phone (703) 994-9037
Email:  scottennis@gmail.com


An actor suffering from a bad review of his Hamlet performance finds a skull on a beach and engages in a discussion of theatrical philosophy, ironically, with the skull, who turns out to be the actual Yorick, jester of Elsinore.

Shawn is a stage actor just coming off a bad review of his recent performance as Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He is probably on the cusp of being too old to play Hamlet.

Yorick is the skull of the actual Yorick, jester of Elsinore. Besides his time playing in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he carries a dislike for thoughtless humanity, expressed through theater and his own being dropped from a ship into the Long Island Sound.

Note: Yorick should be an actual actor in complete black attire with head painted like a skull. Yorick skull would be best “picked up” by Shawn and “placed” on a box or table. Flowers may be retrieved offstage by Shawn.

__________

SHAWN picks up a skull from the beach.

SHAWN
Well, here’s irony after my shitty Hamlet reviews.

SHAWN holds up the skull and proceeds like an actor reciting lines.

SHAWN (CONT’D)
Yorick? No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.

YORICK
Prufrock? Or Polonius?

SHAWN
(astounded)
How would Yorick know a poem by T. S. Eliot?

YORICK
I was in a troupe in the 60s that fucking worshiped Tommy.

SHAWN
The 60s? How long have you been doing theater?

YORICK
Pretty much since they dug me up to bury Ophelia. I started out as a simple candle holder until that dude from England wrote his version of that little shit, Hamlet. Then I got cast as myself. Tough role, hey?

SHAWN
You are Yorick.

YORICK
Yes, I am. 

SHAWN
How'd you get here?

YORICK 
Where's here?

SHAWN 
Connecticut. 

YORICK 
Near New York?

SHAWN 
Closer than Elsinore.

YORICK 
I was supposed to be performing in New York.

SHAWN
I used to perform in New York. I just finished playing “that little shit, Hamlet.” What happened to you?

YORICK 
Some dickhead on the ship took me up on the deck and tried reciting lines. Dropped me over the side. Too much to drink, probably. What about you?

SHAWN 
The critics didn’t like my performance.

YORICK
Why not? Are you a dickhead too?

Shawn stares out at a cargo ship in the sound. He is lost in thoughts about his last performance.

YORICK
Hello? Anybody home?

SHAWN
Sorry. I'm just a little stunned. 

YORICK 
Wow. Stunned. And nobody even dropped you off a ship into the ocean.

SHAWN
I’m glad I smoked all that weed before coming here.

YORICK
Weed? I like weed.

Shawn pulls out a pipe, fills it with marijuana from a small bag, and takes a hit.

SHAWN
Yeah, but how are you gonna smoke it?  You no longer have those lips that Hamlet kissed, how oft, we know
not.

YORICK
I have a shell that I use for a pipe. Clench it between my teeth.

SHAWN
Classy.

YORICK
What’s that supposed to mean?

SHAWN
It means you sound like a weed slut who would do anything for a hit.

YORICK
Including quoting some cheesy poem?

SHAWN
Pretty ballsy calling Eliot cheesy.

YORICK
Not Tommy. Just his poem.

SHAWN
So, the actor is the play, but the poet is not the poem?

YORICK
Whatever. Did you find my shell?

SHAWN
Didn’t look.

YORICK
So, that would be no?

SHAWN
Of course.

YORICK
How hard is it for you to just say yes or no?

SHAWN
I said no.

YORICK
No. You said, “didn’t look.”

SHAWN
Well that implies no.

YORICK
Kind of like asking for a hit implies that I can smoke it.

SHAWN
But you never asked.

YORICK
Yes I did.

SHAWN
No. All you said was, “I like weed.”

YORICK
Wasn’t the request for a hit implied?

SHAWN
Tell you what. Let’s hear what you’ve got. If the poet is the poem I’ll give you a hit.

YORICK
So, you want me to compose a poem requesting a hit of your weed?

SHAWN
Yeah.

YORICK
There once was a man from Nantucket

SHAWN
It has to be original.

YORICK
There once was a man with some ganja.

SHAWN
Good luck with that one. Nothing rhymes with ganja.

YORICK
Poems don’t have to rhyme.

SHAWN
True. Go ahead.

YORICK
That’s it. That’s my poem. When you give me a hit, the poet will be the poem.

SHAWN
Ok. Let me see if I can find that shell pipe.

YORICK
Or something of a similar pattern.

SHAWN
You make it all so enticing.

YORICK
Let’s break the expected pattern.

SHAWN
With the prosody of intellect. I’ll be Rosencrantz.

YORICK
And I will be Guildenstern.

SHAWN
Yes. We are not Prince Hamlet, nor were meant to be . . .

YORICK
To be, or not to be? That is the question.

SHAWN
Alas, poor questions, I knew them well.

YORICK
And who will declare that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead?

SHAWN
I think it’ll be Tom Stoppard.

YORICK
Fitting to have death declared by clowns, digging one up or dramatizing one’s breath.
(cough, cough)

SHAWN
Are you sick?

YORICK
Yes. My lungs are sick and spotted.

SHAWN
Ah, not a volta already.

YORICK
Out, out damned spot.

SHAWN
And next?

YORICK
Et tu, Rosencrantz?

SHAWN
Fitting. Any knife?

YORICK
Only the dagger I see before my eyes.

SHAWN
I deserved that.

YORICK
Let's go back to Elsinore. Let's go back to my grave.

SHAWN 
Your grave? Isn't it Ophelia’s now?

YORICK 
Exactly. She loved gathering flowers.

SHAWN 
So you want to talk about flowers?

YORICK 
Yes. Go pick some and bring them over here.

Shawn leaves the driftwood and walks back to some flowering bushes then returns with a handful of flowers.

SHAWN 
(falsetto)
There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you; and here's some for me: we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died: they say he made a good end,--

SHAWN
(normal voice)
Just kidding. It’s all beach scrub.

YORICK
These flowers are like you.

SHAWN
How do you figure?

YORICK
Throw them out into the water.

Shawn stands and throws the flowers into the sound.

SHAWN
Okay, now what?

YORICK
Where are the flowers?

SHAWN
In the water.

YORICK
Really?

Shawn stands up and sees the flowers are back on the beach.

SHAWN
Ok. So the waves brought them back to the beach.

YORICK
Anything wrong with that?

SHAWN
No. That’s the normal course when you throw flowers into the ocean.

YORICK
Exactly. Nothing wrong with being washed up.

END