Justin Brock | Poetry

Sandhya, over at The Umbilical Chord just did a post about a new free mp3 from Radiohead.

Download it free from Waste.uk.com

I wrote this poem, “I Forget,” in 2001 or 2002 . . . can’t remember. I was teaching English Comp. to freshmen while trying to figure out marriage and work my way through graduate school. Sometimes I quote the poem to my children when I put them to bed. Or maybe I’m quoting it to myself in their hearing. I never finished graduate school.

When Moses led the Hebrew children across a divided Red Sea, they gathered a few stones and built an altar with them on the other side. In this poem, Caleb corrects a wrong assumption of his grandson’s.

This is the second of the Caleb Poems. Both of the poems reference the crossing of a river. Here, Caleb speaks again to his grandson before crossing the Jordan to begin with Joshua and the Hebrew children the conquest of Canaan.