News & Observer | newsobserver.com | Song of Joy

Published: Dec 31, 2006 12:30 AM
Modified: Jan 03, 2007 07:45 AM

Song of Joy

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PAUL JONES

Jones, who did the first part of his growing up in Charlotte, is amazed that at his advanced age he can still qualify as a distinguished member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. A graduate of N.C. State and of Warren Wilson College, Jones is the director of ibiblio.org. Jones is author of the chapbook "What the Welsh and Chinese Have in Common." He is chairman of the judges panel for the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize and the recent winner of the 2006 Knowledge Trust Innovation Award. Jones is blessed to live with the lovely and talented Sally Greene, a member of the Chapel Hill Town Council, and Tucker Jones, a future cell biologist, member of the Smith Middle School Odyssey of the Mind team and a WCOM Teen Spirit DJ.

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Paul JonesComment on this story
I heard a voice in the night saying "Joy is here" then after a pause "It might be insincere." I noticed that the lines created a perfect triplet of three lines of three syllables with rhyme. Of course they should occur three times in a poem. But the poem's length? The most magical number would be ninety-nine; the sum of the sums of divisors of the first eleven integers. Incidental to this mathematical epiphany, I suddenly recalled William Wordsworth's wonderful poem "The Tables Turned." The birds sang and the sun rose. I wrote this poem. Hope you enjoy.

Joy is here!
It may be
insincere.

Chickadees
sing out what
seems to be

a song sweet,
not fear nor
tortured tweet

in defense
of their nest
in the dense

thorn thicket.
Is it love
when we get

songs from wrens:
"Joy is here!"
then they end?

They may be
insincere,
seems to me.

What the heck.
"We murder
to dissect,"

Wordsworth wrote
when writing
got his goat.

On some nights,
an untrue
love delights.

Insincere?
It may be.
Joy is here!

(Editor's note: In keeping with his mathematical epiphany, Jones' introduction is also 99 words!)

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