Clerihew for a fictional person: Nell Lark

Clerihew for a fictional person begins with an invented life and two rhyming couplets. Here, Nell Lark keeps a ledger for the dark.

Nell, her room, the visitors and every event in this portrait are invented. The poem is an original exercise about an imaginary person, with no real biography, account, transaction or measured observation behind it.

Nell’s desk

Nell Lark chose the desk because it faced the part of the room where evening arrived first. Her neighbour had suggested turning it toward the window. Nell said the window already received enough attention. She put her ledger beneath the lamp and left the chair facing the corner, where a narrow patch of dark had begun gathering behind a basket.

The ledger had belonged to nobody before Nell because she had made it herself. Its cover was plain. Inside, she had ruled a few broad spaces for the things she intended to notice. She had not decided what to put at the tops of the spaces. For now, she wrote a word wherever there was room for it.

Her first visitor that evening was the shadow of an umbrella. It entered without the umbrella and stood beside the door as if waiting for somebody to shake rain from it. Nell looked at its pointed top, then at the dry floor. She asked whether it had brought an address. The shadow spread itself slightly across the wall.

She wrote “by the door” in the ledger. That was an address of sorts. The shadow settled beneath the coat hook, and Nell asked it to leave the middle of the doorway clear. It moved toward the skirting board with a dignity she had not expected from something shaped like an unopened umbrella.

Outside, the sky still held a pale strip above the roofs. Nell could see it from her chair if she leaned far enough to the left. She did not lean that evening. She wanted to finish an entry before another visitor arrived, and she had already lost the place where she meant to write the umbrella’s name.

The visitors

The next shadow had no object with it either. It resembled a hand with its fingers held together, although Nell could not see an arm. It rested on the edge of the desk and waited. She turned the ledger toward it. The shadow moved across the page, leaving the paper exactly as it had been.

“You can tell me,” Nell said. “You do not have to sign.” The hand shadow bent toward the line she had written. She decided to call it Hand for the moment and asked whether that would do. It withdrew a little, then returned. Nell took that as the answer she would use in her imaginary office.

She had planned to charge each shadow rent for the space it occupied. The idea had arrived before the ledger. Now that the visitors were present, she found she had no place to receive what they might bring. She opened a drawer and discovered a folded scarf, a button and the letter she had been meaning to answer.

The drawer could remain as it was. Nell closed it and put a small empty dish beside the ledger. She told the shadows it was there if they needed it. The umbrella shadow leaned against the wall. Hand stretched across the dish for a moment, then slipped beneath it, where Nell could no longer see its fingers.

She wrote another word in the ledger: “waiting.” It belonged beside the dish rather than either visitor’s name. Nell had not expected the little office to contain so much waiting. She moved the lamp farther from the edge of the desk and looked toward the basket, wondering whether the patch behind it intended to join the queue.

The portrait

Nell Lark
Kept a ledger for the dark;
She charged each shadow rent
And wondered where the daylight went.

Lark/dark form the first rhyme; rent/went form the second. The name enters the first couplet, and the lines remain uneven.

In the room of the story, Nell had not noticed the daylight leaving. She had been listening for a knock from a visitor that could cross a threshold without touching it. When she finally looked at the window, the pale strip above the roofs had narrowed. She stood so quickly that her chair brushed the basket.

A shadow slid out from behind it. This one was broad at the bottom and wore a little point at the top. Nell could not decide whether it belonged to the basket or the chair or something that had never been in the room. She asked it to wait while she looked outside, and it waited without choosing an explanation.

There was still some gold in the sky beyond the far chimney. Nell pressed her hand against the window frame and watched it. She had spent much of the afternoon expecting evening, then had become occupied with the things evening brought. The light had continued on its own while she was writing “by the door.”

She considered entering Daylight in the ledger. It had occupied the room earlier and had left before she opened the office. Then she wondered where she would send a message to something already beyond the chimney. She returned to the desk without writing it down. The umbrella shadow had spread along the bottom of the wall.

An open drawer

The letter in her drawer came back to her mind. Nell had promised herself an answer before supper. She pulled it out, leaving the scarf and button together. The envelope was creased where she had folded it around the page. She smoothed it with the heel of her hand and read the last few lines.

Her neighbour wanted to know whether she still had the little green bowl from the previous spring. Nell looked toward the shelf and saw it behind a stack of folded cloth. She had kept it there after moving things away from the window. The bowl had not become difficult to find; she had simply stopped looking for it.

She took it down and put it on the empty chair. That would remind her to return it. The broad shadow moved toward the chair too, then stopped beneath its front edge. Nell asked whether it had come for the bowl. It stayed where it was, offering no reason for changing its place.

She began her answer on another sheet, away from the ledger. The first sentence said she had found the bowl. The second asked when her neighbour would be home. Nell crossed out an explanation of how long it had been behind the cloth. She could bring the actual bowl instead of making the letter longer.

Hand reappeared beside her writing. It followed the edge of the fresh page and stopped near the last line. Nell moved her elbow to give it room. She had begun to enjoy its quiet attendance, although it had supplied nothing for the little dish. She told it she was writing a different kind of letter now.

At the window

The sky had become blue by the time she finished. Nell carried her answer to the windowsill and set it where she would see it in the morning. The envelope stayed on the desk because she wanted to reuse it. She had no wish to search for another while the visitors were waiting.

From the window, the room looked different. Her desk lamp had not been lit, and the ledger lay open in the dim part of the table. The umbrella shadow had become difficult to distinguish from the corner. Hand was no longer beside the page. Nell walked back slowly, looking at the places where she had last noticed them.

She asked whether anyone intended to leave. No answer came. Nell thought she might have made her office too comfortable, although she had offered no chairs beyond the one now holding the bowl. She picked up the ledger and found that she could still read her own large words when she held it toward the window.

There were names, places and the word waiting. None told her where the daylight had gone after the chimney. She closed the book with a finger keeping her place and looked toward the lamp. If she lit it, she would have to see what became of the company she had gathered in its unlit room.

A lamp

Nell put the ledger down before reaching for the lamp. In this imaginary room, the umbrella shadow rose along the wall as the light came on. It became thinner at its pointed end and broader near the floor. The broad shadow by the chair moved into the space beneath the desk, where Nell’s feet had been.

Hand returned to the edge of the small dish. Nell laughed when she saw it. She had been preparing to say goodbye and had instead rearranged the whole waiting room. She turned the ledger back to its open page and added “under the desk” beside the entry she had not yet given a name.

She left the little dish empty. There was no need to put the button in it merely to give the visitors an example. The scarf could stay in the drawer too. Nell had enough things to return or answer without making the button and scarf part of her evening office.

Her neighbour knocked while she was looking for a clean envelope corner. Nell called that she was coming and picked up the green bowl. She brought it to the door with both hands. The umbrella shadow kept to the skirting board while she passed, leaving the threshold as clear as she had asked.

The neighbour was pleased to see the bowl and said she had come to ask whether Nell wanted a slice of the loaf she had made. Nell said yes. She left the letter on the windowsill, where it could remain an answer she had written before the answer’s reader arrived. They talked at the open door while the shadows waited behind her.

When she returned, the ledger was still open and the dish still empty. Nell sat with the bread on a plate beside her. She brushed a crumb away from the page, then found the pencil beneath her sleeve. She wrote a small note about the bowl on the letter’s envelope and left the office open while she ate.

Nell Lark and her ledger are wholly invented.

Actual vases

The Coast Sand Favrile vase account identifies MPN AV12101 and Dale Tiffany Lighting. Its sole original image shows a tall tapering form, scalloped opening and integral round foot. The account does not authenticate its material, maker, dimensions, water capacity or handling performance here.

The Cinnabar Wave vase account identifies MPN AV12392. Its sole image shows a broad, low, wavy form above a clear looped base. Those loops belong to the pictured structure, without a lifting instruction or separate accessory supply. Neither actual offer is Nell’s fictional bowl or a tested story prop.

Other poems

The unintended prose rhyme guide removes an accidental end rhyme from a scene. This portrait deliberately keeps its two rhyming couplets.

The short-poem refrain guide repeats a sentence across changing stanzas. Nell’s portrait uses a name and comic biography, without a returning refrain.

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