This was the first Willie Nod poem written for Blythe while i was in the air between Greensboro, North Carolina and Nashville, April 1978. (Copyright 2017, jim jewell and Copyright 2017, Sarah Jewell)

Willie Nod, an Introduction

Willie Nod rode the wings of the silver bird
high in the clouds;
he laughed at the night wind
when it threw the rain.
Willie Nod smiled and rubbed the neck of his bird.
He laughed because he loved people and
the silver bird.

In keeping with my mother’s observation about my father, i once again am acting like “a worm in hot ashes.” This is a project started long ago, put into a rough book form for my grandson, Samuel James Jewell Gander (just to make sure there is no confusion, once again i point out Sam’s two middle names are for his great grandfather, not his grandfather, and that makes me very happy and proud). My younger daughter Sarah  provided the illustrations in that book and it is her illustrations accompanying the writing included in this “Willie Nod” section of my website.

i now intend to post one of these at least once a week until they are all here. Eventually, i hope to turn them into a book for publication.

They began when i wrote the first one for my daughter Blythe, Sam’s mother, when she was six-years old. It was April 1978. As i recall, i was returning from a trip to Norfolk to meet Captain Stark and planning to served as his Assistant Officer In Charge (AOIC) for the one-week Surface Warfare phase of the NROTC midshipman summer training program. i would have six weeks of this training as Temporary Additional Duty (TAD) from my  position as Associate Professor (can you believe that?), Senior Naval Officer of the NROTC Unit at Texas A&M University. The divorce from Blythe’s mother was almost final. i knew my role i relished as a live-in father for Blythe was ending, and i would be gone from her for long periods of time.  

Anyway (which my mother said a lot because she was always thinking of something else while talking about something and would signal returning to her subject with “anyway” or rarely “any how), it  was on the flight leg from Greenville, North Carolina to Nashville, stopping by my parents’ home in Lebanon before returning to College Station. i was trying to think of something to write, a theme to continue when i was really away from Blythe for long periods. i looked out my port hole and thought of flying on a bird. i wrote the first Willie Nod poem.

i wrote quite a few more for Blythe, then Sarah, and maybe one or two for Sam.

i wish to point out the poems are under my copyright and the illustrations are under Sarah’s copyright.

i hope you enjoy them.

Here is Sarah’s first and second renditions of Willie Nod.

The first illustration of Willie Nod:

Sarah’s second rendition of Willie Nod.

Copyright Sarah May Jewell, 2017

This is one of a couple of books i’ve been working on for a long, long time. i have decided to publish them, even though they are working drafts, as serials on this website, much like Charles Dickens and many others did with magazines and newspapers a couple of centuries ago.

i know me well enough to admit the likelihood of me actually publishing these books  is highly unlikely. As for mainstream publishing, i have no desire, after gathering information on the process, to submit to the publisher’s requirements, the political maneuvering, the required marketing efforts, or the effort required from this procrastinator to meet deadlines – just ask Jared Felkins, the editor of The Lebanon Democrat.

i have also proven to myself that self-publishing as my daughter Blythe did so amazingly with her wonderfully funny poetry in Something Smells Like Pee, is a challenge because me learning to use publishing software programs looks more like a scientific research project involving mice and mazes.

Finally, my experience with print-on-demand and co-op publishing was not pleasant. I have eliminated that route from my options

Thus, it finally dawned on me i can publish them on this website.

This particular book began as a poem to my daughter Blythe when i reluctantly was  going through a separation and divorce while stationed at Texas A&M’s NROTC unit. In the summer of 1978, the Navy decided i would be an excellent choice for running the second-class midshipmen surface indoctrination at Little Creek, Virginia for the summer. Flying a puddle jumper over North Carolina, i mused over the fact that the close day-to-day relationship with Blythe was changing forever, and there was nothing i could do responsibly to change that. Looking out the window at the clouds, the beginning thoughts of this poem came into my head, and i had written the poem, intact, by the time i had landed.

Over the years, i wrote a number of poems to Blythe. Then when Sarah was born (seventeen years later than Blythe), i began a new batch of such poems. Since grandson Sam was born, i have written a couple of more and gave him a pamphlet of all of the poems a couple of Christmases ago. 

Sarah is working on illustrations for the “book,” and her drafts will be included with the poems. Obviously, i need to work on the graphics and layout.

You might say this is a work of love.

Willie Nod and the Silver Bird

Willie Nod rode the wings of the silver bird
high in the clouds;
he laughed at the night wind
when it threw the rain.
Willie Nod smiled and rubbed the neck of his bird.
He laughed because he loved people and
the silver bird.