Large Fierce Mammal

Curiosity Shop, NemoArrigo (Source here)

It is a not uncommon experience among Writers to feel as though the words being put upon the page are being dictated from somewhere else. So it is with tonight’s Dark Sentiment.

A nonsense poem of sorts, Dudley’s Shop was written in a state of flow, exactly as you see it here, and while it contains manifestations of old time wisdom, I can offer no other meaning.

See if you can find any.

Dudley’s Shop

By LFM

Dudley runs an antique shop that is exceeding odd,
It has such things as spoiled the child — the very spare-ed rod!
The pot that watched would never boil, it hangs there on a hook,
Emblazoned with a label warning buyers not to look.

On the ceiling hangs a lantern, and the brilliant light it lends
Comes from but a single candle, burning fiercely at both ends.
There’s a peephole in a panel where a favoured few that tries
May find pleasure in the viewing of a sight that cures sore eyes.

Dudley even has a stable down the hallway past the loos,
Where a man to see about a horse awaits as you may choose,
And further back, a pen of swine lies through another door,
Every one for sale complete with pearls to cast before.

The barn cat’s even odder than the beasts it lies among,
Returned by scores of buyers with complaints it got their tongue.
The tree that stands beside the barn calls nearby dogs to song,
And those that do bark up it are invariably wrong.

Notwithstanding its fallaciousness, each dog that deigns to bay
Cries out in joyful knowing that it’s sure to have its day.
The place is built from trees cut five score years ago December,
The axe forgetting in the shed, though all the planks remember.

They creak their tales beneath the feet that come to browse the wares,
Through rooms where discontented men will find no easy chairs,
But discontent’s not Dudley, nor the horse behind the cart
And those rare days of his absence raise the fondness of his heart.

Widowed now a dozen years, the shop to calm his grief,
Dudley lives the promise that he made ere death’s relief,
So as when nothing’s broken there will be no need to fix it,
A promise is a promise however many times he licks it.