This week’s poem, Reid Byer’s “Norridgewocky,” is a clever and lively riff on a Lewis Carroll classic: “The names of the towns in Maine have always put me in mind of Wonderland,” he writes. I love this poem’s virtuoso musical parallels with the original faux-epic poem, and how widely it samples from our state’s euphonic locales.
Byers is a bibliophile and the author of “The Private Library: The History of the Architecture and Furnishing of the Domestic Bookroom.” He has had careers as a Presbyterian minister, a C language programmer and a master IT architect with IBM (not to mention time as a journalist, a welder, a TV newscaster, a choral director and a Navy sailor). A member of the Maine Humanities Council and the Baxter Society, he is currently writing a book about “imaginary books.”
Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.
Norridgewocky
By Reid Byers
‘Twas Bristol, and the Shapleigh Stows
Did Greene and Gorham in the Wade;
All Rangeley were the Oronos,
And the Strong Starks Belgrade.
“Beware the Norridgewock, my son!
The claws that catch, the jaws that crash!
Beware the Ludlow bird, and shun
The Falmouth Allagash.”
He took his Vinal sword in hand:
Long time the Maxfield foe he sought –
So rested he by the Topsham tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in Upton thought he stood,
The Norridgewock, with eyes of flame,
Came Bowdoin though the Weld Greenwood,
And Howland as it came!
One, two! One, two! and through and through
The Vinal sword went Caratunk!
He left it dead, and with its head
Went Kittery Kennebunk.
“And hast though slain the Norridgewock?
Come to my arms, my Belfast Bay!
O Fryeburg Stowe! Peru! Casco!”
He Milford in his Jay.
‘Twas Bristol, and the Shapleigh Stows
Did Greene and Gorham in the Wade;
All Rangeley were the Oronos,
And the Strong Starks Belgrade.
Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Norridgewocky,” copyright 2013 by Reid Byer, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.
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