Once upon a Greening bright
When morning dew cast early light
To paint the day all rainbow hued,
Caught was I, my britches askew,
While from the mists of swirling grey
Did coalesce my fair and bonny bae. 

Long that Summer we did spar
In the back of my parent’s car
With fencing tongues in Midday’s heat
My Heart in hand (or hand on teat!)
Through many long days and too short nights
We did consume Earthly Delights

‘Twas fun, until the Autumn fell
Over lattes, I heard the knell
Of the deathbell, something’s not right
She slipped away in dead of night.
Be this Trick or be this a Treat?
The candy is but mine to eat…

Then came Winter, through the long dark
Binging Netflix, “yay, Tony Stark.”
Nothing but doldrums. Woe is me.
Perhaps I’ll write some poetry.
A tale of love forlorn and lost,
My brain is but a tempest tossed.

“Once upon a Greening bright
When morning dew cast early light
To paint the day all rainbow hued,
Caught was I, my britches askew,
While from the mists of swirling grey
Did coalesce my fair and bonny bae.”

Prompt: Unprompted.
Requester: Myself
Request method: N/A.
Author is Sean Prunka
Copyright 2026 Sean Prunka. All rights reserved.
Author Notes: The hidden subtext of the title is “What if Shakespeare were an adolescent today?” but also contains the  doubled meaning of “How does a teen react to Shakespeare?”. 

And to think the whole poem was created simply because I didn’t like the way spring had spring and vernal, while autumn had autumn, fall, and autumnal. Summer just has summer, and winter only has winter, and those are okay. But autumn getting the extra word always irritated me. We use autumn because fall is too banal. But isn’t spring also too banal? Shouldn’t we therefore use Ver or Vern? But no, because Vern reminds me of Ernest Goes to Camp, and that’s just wrong. Doesn’t get much more banal than that. And so I named it The Greening, and I wrote the first stanza out of nowhere in about five minutes, including three rewrites. Then, the rest of it just flowed from that.