Happy Birthday, Charles

I look at the book’s thickness

and dread (past tense: drood?)

my great expectations but Pip

and the decayed lady

in the decayed wedding dress

captured me, Charles, they did,

captured me forever, opening

the great not the little dorrit

of my head. I twisted

with Fagin but Nancy died,

Charles, she died! while

David in his penny meadow

watched Sydney die so Lucy

could love in one city if not

the other and Little Nell, Charles,

such a curiosity they shopped as

they called to the boats in Boston,

what of Little Nell? What of her?

Uriah heaped evil upon evil and

that little villain who quilped

his badness, Charles, where did

he come from and where did he go?

An even easier miser gave

his name for all as he pondered

the surplus population (like

the child with the crutch, Charles).

Mysteries, wonderful mysteries,

but the greatest was the boy

in the blacking factory

re-imagining the literature,

re-imagining the novel,

re-imagining the language;

he did that, Charles, you know

he did that, that boy; that boy

in the blacking factory

fathered them all.

Today is the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. I was 12 when I read A Tale of Two Cities, 14 when I read Great Expectations and 15 when I read David Copperfield. Dickens opened up a new world for me, and he remains a major influence on my writing.

Related:

The Charles Dickens Museum

There’s an online journal assembling all of his known published work: http://www.djo.org.uk/

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.