'A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 1935 American romance fantasy film of William Shakespeare's play, directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, and starring Ian Hunter, James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Olivia de Havilland, Joe E. Brown, Dick Powell, and Victor Jory. Produced by Henry Blanke and Hal Wallis for Warner Brothers...the film is about the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors, who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the story is set. The play, which is categorized as a comedy, is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world. Felix Mendelssohn's music was extensively used, as re-orchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The ballet sequences featuring the fairies were choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska.'

(quote above is from m.wikipedia)


Some 80 years have passed since this movie was made. The bit of the film I've seen, only a few minutes long, shows the wonders of a summer night in ancient times, as the producers imagined it.

Movie making was still new 80 years ago; this is a silent movie in black and white. The scenes I saw were wondrous and magical. They take place in the night - lovely, surreal effects. Light twinkles from the moonlit trees; dozens of tiny fairies emerge and frolic along a forested path.

Before computers, and before 'talkies', these movie makers created a work of art using film. What is ironic and impressive is that Shakespeare's centuries old blithe and poetic dialogue is successfully translated into a movie with no spoken words and only a few captions. 

bells jingle

sun is glowing
all is bright
sidewalk roses,
cats black and white
bells jingle
like water, light
tumbling over rock

digging roots

hands in the
dark earth
fingers digging
tugging at roots
a beet, round and solid,
a turnip, or a carrot
so orange and long
brush off a little beetle here
dirt clinging to the carrot there
hands cradle food
for body and soul
oh the arousing smell
the sun and rain blessed earth
warm and rich with life

Piety is a word one rarely hears anymore, that sacred state of deep devotion to God's love.

seed, soil, sun

'Soil is another ingredient needed to make food. This tiny layer of our Earth is made up of silt, sand, and clay, along with minerals, dead leaves, twigs, and a zillion tiny organisms. Each handful of soil contains more living things than all the human beings on earth.'

from the book
Seed Soil Sun: Earth's Recipe for Food
by Chris Peterson
Photographs by David R. Lundquist

daytime moon

shedding
just past gibbous
the still plump moon
swathed in trails of cloud
hangs cheerfully
above the parking lot
in the pale morning light
white paper moon
on gray fading
to blue sky
how i love
a daytime moon

for a long time
Oscar the Grouch
has been my favorite Muppet
his graveled voice
his shining trashcan home
the way the lid pops up
and there he is
grumbling at the neighbors
and making funny commentary.

if i could give him a present
it would be an introduction
to two cats
(if they wanted to be his friends...
i think they might like his
interesting habitation.
I see them standing on the trashcan top
peering down
at Oscar's fuzzy face,
sniffing, purring
and wondering what's inside
the Grouchy Muppet
and his shining house...)