Poem: "Amusing Marginalia"

[ysabetwordsmith]

Name: ysabetwordsmith
Title: "Amusing Marginalia"
Colors: Vellum #13 Marginalia
Supplies and Styles: None.
Word Count: 103
Rating: G
Warnings: No standard warnings apply.

This poem is a stand-alone piece. It is the freebie for the March 2013 Crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from alexseanchai.


"Amusing Marginalia"


History is full of
amusing marginalia,
rude bits of humor that
remind us of common humanity.

Here are the footprints
of a cat walking across the pages,
immortalized in black ink.

Here is the place where
a cat pissed on my manuscript,
a bygone monk explains,
with text and drawings around the stain.

Here is a picture of the mouse
that distracted the scribe Hildebert
by eating the cheese set aside for his lunch.

Often it is not the serious things
we most remember, but the silly ones,
notes jotted in the margins of our days
that somehow outlast the centuries.

Comments

[bookblather]

I saw that manuscript with the cat feet, and somehow that sort of made it real, that that many years ago someone had written this and had a cat walk across it-- that's the sort of feeling I get from this poem.

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

That's exactly the effect I was aiming for -- those little quirks and flaws in history that make it real, make it human.

Re: Yay!

[bookblather]

That exactly, yeah. I put this poem in my memories for that reason. Also, I have a little book that I keep some poems I really like in-- would you mind if I copied this one into it too?

Re: Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>I put this poem in my memories for that reason.<<

That's delightful to hear.

>> Also, I have a little book that I keep some poems I really like in-- would you mind if I copied this one into it too? <<

By all means, go ahead.

You're welcome to request more history-themed poems from me if you like this sort of thing in general; next Poetry Fishbowl will be April 2 with a theme of "fantasy in other eras."