27 years later (a poem, or maybe a confession)

by samuel forbes

Hey there, friend!

There are, roughly speaking, two versions of my poetic “voice”:

• Version 1: Gentle, intellectual, maybe a touch romantic. If you spun a wheel featuring the words “moon,” “stars,” “wind,” and “[insert bird species here],” you would be virtually guaranteed to land on a word that’s in the poem, and probably more than one.

• Version 2: Modern (whatever that means), rant-ey, maybe a little crass, (hopefully) still a touch romantic. I have no idea what words will end up in these poems. There is no spinner big enough. The limit does not exist.

For the last five years, I’ve generally suppressed Version 2. No idea why. Maybe it feels “cheaper” than Version 1, maybe it feels more vulnerable, maybe I’m just ashamed that all of my thoughts aren’t about Dante’s Paradiso, Plato’s Kallipolis, and the cellular structure of exotic frogs.

But those poems are still there. They exist somewhere within me. And sometimes they’re all I feel qualified to write. So, at the risk of destroying whatever brand equity my fledgling Substack has going for it, today’s poem is a Version 2 poem.

As always, thank you for reading. It’s a tremendous honor. :)

---

---