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