After Reading The Venerable Bede

[J.D.]

You washed the grime away from history
the way some eager young holy
washed the last strings of saintflesh
from your old gray bones. But I forgive you—

I forgive you because you revealed
something better still: The way
a man could revel in the voodoo magic

of grass, dirtclumps, and knucklebones,
or a handful of rotted teeth,
during the age when the world
died to be reborn.

I forgive you because the best kind of truth
does not even come from truth
but from trying on the folds
of a dead man’s brain.

[Virgil]

Excellent poem J.D. I love that very first stanza:

You washed the grime away from history
the way some eager young holy
washed the last strings of saintflesh
from your old gray bones. But I forgive you—
Great imagery and a great concluding metaphor. How wonderful. I hope you will show us some more of your poetry.

[J.D.]

Thanks, Virgil, for the kind words. I will show more of my poetry in the future, as I get more comfortable with it.

I'm mainly a fiction writer, or used to be--I even went and got the MFA--but before that I wrote a little verse. I'm a couple of years out of graduate school, a teacher now, and I haven't written much fiction outside of revisions in a year. At first this depressed me and made me feel like I'd stopped being a writer. But I have found a renewed interest in the classics, especially the classics not everyone reads, and for some reason, this has sparked a return to the form I first loved when I decided I wanted to write.

Who knows, maybe I'll even grow brave enough to send some of this new stuff off to a magazine one day.

[ampoule]

Who knows, maybe I'll even grow brave enough to send some of this new stuff off to a magazine one day.

You certainly should. Glad you are getting your groove back.

[PrinceMyshkin]

You washed the grime away from history
the way some eager young holy
washed the last strings of saintflesh
from your old gray bones. But I forgive you—

I forgive you because you revealed
something better still: The way
a man could revel in the voodoo magic

of grass, dirtclumps, and knucklebones,
or a handful of rotted teeth,
during the age when the world
died to be reborn.

I forgive you because the best kind of truth
does not even come from truth
but from trying on the folds
of a dead man’s brain.

Welcome to the club, J.D. Glad to hear you've given up on that Glass family! We've got this in common, you and I, in that I too have fallen out of favour with my real sweetheart, narrative fiction, and have been ditzing around with poetry. Not that this poem of yours is ditzing around - far from it! And those gritty images suggest to me that you're really a fiction writer at heart.

[Virgil]

Thanks, Virgil, for the kind words. I will show more of my poetry in the future, as I get more comfortable with it.

I'm mainly a fiction writer, or used to be--I even went and got the MFA--but before that I wrote a little verse. I'm a couple of years out of graduate school, a teacher now, and I haven't written much fiction outside of revisions in a year. At first this depressed me and made me feel like I'd stopped being a writer. But I have found a renewed interest in the classics, especially the classics not everyone reads, and for some reason, this has sparked a return to the form I first loved when I decided I wanted to write.

Who knows, maybe I'll even grow brave enough to send some of this new stuff off to a magazine one day.

Well great. We have bi-monthly short story contests. I bet you'll do fine.