"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." 
– As You Like It, Act 5, Scene i

So which are you, fellow, wise man or fool?

I have a pleasant wit about me, 
if it please you.

‘Tis so? Where-abouts? 
Does it hang, top or bottom? 
Can you toss it o’er your shoulder, with a continental shudder? 
… Or, oooh, somewhere about the middle?

Ay, I know not. Up top, mayhap.

May I see it?

See it?

Yes, if it be particularly astute, 
I may wish to borrow of it.
I have much hankering for a witty stew.

Stew? My wits? Thou would’st have my wits for a stew?

Nay, nay. They are in a stew already,
consternation set a’bubble.
Thou are he who has set his wit afire 
and cries to heaven for relief.

I? Afire? Give me a glass!
Give me drink that I be put out!

Thou are well put out already.
A glass, say’st thou?
Thou would’st inspect thy parts,
find wisdom in eyelashes,
truth in a carbuncle?
I will have no more of such parts.
Why, with wit thou may smile up a storm. 

‘Tis out, pray? The flamble?

Nay, ‘tis thou, knave, were out.
Therefore, clown, abandon!
Which is to say – in the vulgar – to leave 
Take heed – take to thy heels, 
if thou canst find them – in short, depart! 

Aye, sir. Rest you merry. 

But, fellow, come back betimes. 
“’Tis meat and drink to me to see a clown.” 
                        

When I ask myself why, even in the bad moments, 
I wish to continue living, sometimes I answer, ‘music’…
Perfect, that day we traveled to Harvard’s sweet old Sanders Theater,
old wood, heart of wood, to hear “the Complete Brandenburg Concertos”
with friends, decades-old friends, Gail confessing beforehand 
that the Brandenburgs were her ‘favorite music’
We climb the heavy stairs to the balcony to look down upon
a rotating ensemble gifted with the power to make things speak,
wholly given over to the task, as though they loved it even more than we

Then, the elation continuing, we tramped back down 
amid a tribe of devotees mostly grayer than we,
as if the herd had been culled and we lovers of the immortals left behind 
while younger bloods kicked up their heels on the campus green.
Late winter afternoon, though mild, light still in the sky,
the love of beauty shining everywhere,
our hearts light, we cross the Yard and near the gate,
the Square’s busy world humming just beyond… 

Gail, talking, everyone’s spirits still high, suddenly ceasing
in mid-sentence, begins to fall, slumps to the ground,
the others catching her, slowing her descent. I shield her head 
from hard earth. Fainted? No premonitions of decline, no sign of illness –
certain am I that she will rise in a moment, exclaim in protest,
catch her wind, explode with questions, ‘What happened?’ –
Still, her husband Karl’s manipulations take on an air 
of desperation, none of us three survival-trained, and all at once 

the world takes note! A flock of young faces, strong limbs, students, 
seemingly well-prepped apply their methods with confident hands, 
manipulations perform, call out for equipment – objects appear!
a defibrillator? Now, I think, surely now we will seize the moment! 
the devil depart, the breath of animation return to our companion’s lips,
refill her lungs!… Any moment now… and yet she lies unmoving… 
My wife having called the storied 911, we hear the siren,
the professionals respond on chariot white with science and technology

Doing, surely doing, as they are trained to do – sirens, red light, chest 
compressions! More equipment, a machine that shouts “Press harder!” 
A stretcher made of plastic. Surely now the spark of life must flare anew.
I am convinced! – For life is strong, and does not lightly yield its grip…
And only when, at the ER hospital, chauffeured by the town police,
we wait behind our masks while a trained physician strives alone,
in a quiet room beyond our sight, to work a miracle upon the body
of our friend… whose soul has fled… Only then do I accept 

that all that has taken place that afternoon is not a drill… 
a cautionary tale, a walking shadow on a stage presented by the Universe 
to scare us into Insight… but a hard-hearted truth: That an apparently healthy, 
surely well-loved person, strong in mind, strong of body, at the end of a joyful day
in which all has gone superbly well, may, without writ-large, fair-warning signs –
signals, interruptions, exclamations, or dot-dot-dot…simply fall and die. 
She fell, on a day so otherwise nearly perfect… 
It happens. It happened.