Promptly 4 and 5

Ophelia

Ophelia

Thus from the bridge,
borne by the careful current
on measured waves and shadowed water,
between the Scylla and Charybdis
of towering banks,

she floats with unseeing eyes,
life’s last kindness unwilling
to draw the curtain
on this final view of skies afire,
wasted in a life cut short.

And so she carries Hamlet’s future,
empty now of all but retribution,
a wild orgy of death and dying,
his bride forgotten in the stream.


Line count: 14
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Challenge, Week 43 2024
Prompt: As per illustration.