Bones of Bashan

Third in the PoMoSco series. The source is Psalm 22, as rendered in the New Zealand Prayer Book.

The guidelines were to select words and phrases by a means of rolling dice. I had done a similar poem using the I Ching. The editor-in-chief of the PoMoSco project gave me permission to use the I Ching for this project as well.

The I Ching didn't give as much variety as I had hoped, and using a method similar to what I did for A Loveless Marriage (linked above) would have been too time-consuming, so I also applied an on-line dice rolling site — using six twelve sided dice. Each die would determine which line I would select; the line of the trigram would determine whether I would select the first half or second half of the line. I think the end product is rather interesting.

This poem also marks the third in my personal “Holy Week” series. The PoMoSco Handbook has a suggested calendar, but I respond to do this prompt out of order. “Roll the Dice” immediately made me think of a line from Ps 22: “they cast lots for my clothing”. “Casting lots” is similar to rolling dice. A connection!