Illumination | Haiku

Star-Crossed

Love and loss

For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo Shakespeare

Reach for the other

Star-crossed lovers meet and part

Divine their future

The characters of Romeo and Juliet have been depicted in literature, music, dance, and theatre. The appeal of the young hero and heroine — whose families, the Montagues and the Capulets, respectively, are implacable enemies — is such that they have become, in the popular imagination, the representative type of star-crossed lovers…. Encyclopedia Britannica.

Years ago, I visited Verona in Italy. This medieval town hosts romantic couples and tourists who come to walk in the footsteps of Romeo and Juliet. They take a photo of Juliet’s famous balcony, look at Romeo’s house, or spend devotional minutes at Julia’s grave. Verona works its charm on lovers. They stick declarations of their love and their initials on slips of paper to the walls. They walk together and think of the story behind the literary work, imagining that Romeo and Juliet had existed.

I read this beautiful love poem by Rebecca Stevens Alder on the same day I looked at photos of a long-ago trip to Italy.

The two influences came together in my haiku about the doomed love of Romeo and Juliet.