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AFTERWORD

Gentle Reader,

What you’ll find below is an upside-down anthology of sorts: a journal of my frequent nightly musings from January 2008 till now, in reverse order.

Much of what I write here is verse in traditional rhymed iambic pentameters, old fashioned in form but contemporary in topics and idiom. It asks to be read aloud so that the effects of rhyme and meter may be felt.

Sometimes I write brief prose essays, but even my verses are essays, or attempts, pursuing a line of thought to some conclusion, though more sonorously than those in prose: discursive verses, I call them.

In either case, you’re the reader over my shoulder as I write, which makes my writing different than when I have no audience in mind but only a vague urge to express. So I thank you for whatever attention you give my words and thoughts and feelings because you might so easily attend to something else, and you soon will.

To beguile you to linger longer, though, I’ve coupled most of my compositions with a photo or image I’ve taken or borrowed, which sometimes corresponds with my words of that day.

Thank you for visiting here. I hope you enjoy your stay and are moved to come back soon.

—Alan Nordstrom

*

OURE DOGGES

Now lat me telle you of oure dogges two.
The one is redde and away longes to goe
Outside to chase the sprightly squirrels far
And wide, tho only sometime does she mar
Hir games by catching one of hem to kille,
And that were sadde to doon a creature ille.
Th’other of our dogges is blak and whit
And loves to frisk aboute in hir delit,
As if she were a faïrie or an elve,
And howles for companye whan by hirselve.
The two of hem for treates have grown fat
And in good pointe, with shining cotes that
Do glisten like bright mettle in the sunne,
And alle hir dayes are dedicat to funne.
The redde one is hent Gypsy, gladde to roam;
The blak and whit is Keena, who keepes hoom.

*

SOUND SENSE

Why should I write iambically
And thus restrict my scope,
Then make things worse by adding rhymes—
Am I a hopeless dope?

Why not just write and let words flow
As free as they may be?
Why limit what I might compose
So arbitrarily?

My answer is—because of you,
For both your ear and eye;
I’ve not your mind alone to please,
But sense to satisfy.



*

CONTEMPLATION

I sit to contemplate and loose my mind,
Which roves and ranges like a wandering dog
Scouring the landscape in keen hopes to find
Some hidden tidbit stashed behind a log
Or sniff the traces of some lurking cat
Malingering beneath a bush or shrub,
Brazen enough to hiss and start a spat
For, ah, the joy of such a grand hubbub!

Such contemplating, it turns out, is not
So unadventurous an activity;
Even if practiced in a cave or grot,
It prompts imagination’s ecstasy
And escapades beyond the dull mundane
Above this lower to a higher plane.

*

LET LOOSE

While I sit here and sip my tea, my mind
Meanders like a footloose dog led by
Its nose about the neighborhood, inclined
This way and that by vagrant scents to spy

Into odd crannies or foul trash cans at
The curb, rooting around for scraps and bones,
But hoping most to roust and chase a cat—
Just so, my mind probes knowns and unknowns.

Capriciously my flitting, fickle brain
Alights on this and that, a memory,
A dream, a scheme, some fancy to obtain,
Or something that might turn to poetry.

When once unleashed, who knows where it might go?
The thing’s to let it loose then watch the show.

*

GOOD OLD VERSE

Young poets teeter
On rhyme and meter
Yet mean to keep oblique,
But I’m no cheater
And find it sweeter
To make verse that’s antique.

*

NIGHT TERRORS

For her the line between reality
And dream was razor thin, and often she
Would wake while in the middle of the night
Uncertain if her fright was vaporous sight
Just conjured by her mind, or really true,
Then all next day it left its residue
To taint her mood with vague and nameless dread,
A clammy cloak of fear she could not shed.

*