Wordplay

By Louise Heite

What multitude of words!

Can't you hear them ring and echo,
sing, reflect, reverberate: verbose
sensation cast upon cognition
and half-remembered history!
Take their hands and dance with them!

Choose your words, and celebrate:
so doing, separate, and lose...

"That which is included defines, by its inclusion,
that which is excluded, which in turn consigns,
by its exclusion, that which is included to - "

recline? recluse? re-line? refuse? resign?

You choose. The meaning's in response.

Join their hands together, play a sentence,
line a london-bridge and all fall down!

Tripping rhythms turned on tethered tongue,
little beggar puns with lantern-lights,
smiling face of rhyme wrapped in old lace-

Oh, can't you hear them singing?