April 28 Word of the Day: Breathing

 

Breathing

 

            Effusions everywhere

slip from guards,

            light green

            figuring lines

surprised as day,

            dragging colour

out of night

and its grey

            brown presages.

Airy air fillers,

            lovely constraints

featured for water.

            Rain remembrance

from its first sign.

            Cool brain

fanned with green.

            Pure consolation,

            timely relief

attracting an isolated mind.

            Untimed foliations

spiralling around houses,

            edging streets,

hanging about places,

            soft watery,

just like gurgling.

Firm as thought

at the root,

up above high voltage,

            inscribing freeways.

Where are their endings?

            Brushed up

            vacant lots,

halved around wires,

            hilltop generations.

            Endearing survival

spreads into the sky

just like breathing.

What birds this way?

            Fringes sway

            colour pale,

frail as thought

reaching new currents,

its own pattern

            of itself.

 

[From ‘The Times’, a series of poems written in 2007]

           

Spelling

 April 27 Word of the Day: Spelling

 

Teaching again today to young children writing.

How to spell moon.

 

They choose to write about what they’ve decided already.

The poem of getting here from there.

 

One writes the speeds of his scooter in five lines.

Downhill’s best.

 

There’s the girl who has been to Europe and Rome and Bali.

How to spell Europe.

 

Another lists the contents of a magical forest.

The poem of getting there from here.

 

But they need not go with the set theme of travel.

Dogs are the best, and cats, with names.

 

One child describes a bird building a nest.

How do you spell twigs.

 

Another finds dead wood and builds a fire.

Her first bush camp in large lettering.

 

And the world is quiet and the words come forth.

Steadily towards page two.

 

Sometimes a dee for a bee and a backwards kay.

Correctly spelling bee’s a beginning.

 

And who am I to interrupt the HB loops.

The rubbing out and the margin doodles.

 

A concentrating room of poets.

Words that are all theirs precise and best.

 

 

 

 

Blatteration

 April 26 Word of the Day: Blatteration

 

A Glossary of Domestic Sounds

 

whirligig

a toy which children spin round

“the remote jumps streams, a whirligig in their hands”

 

volant

flying; passing through the air

“invisible messages in good faith and bad arrive volant with pings in the phone”

 

tink

to make a sharp shrill noise

“the kettle’s boiling tinked”

 

sternutation

the act of sneezing

“the cat betrayed its whereabouts with a bout of sternutation”

 

rodomontade

to brag thrasonically; to boast like Rodomonte

“all morning talkback radio rodomontaded”

 

larum

1 alarm; noise noting danger 2 an instrument that makes a noise at a certain hour

“wake-up larum a rooster, sleepy-bye larum ambient chimes”  

 

ignivomous

vomiting fire

“the new ignivomous stove lights automatically”

 

gleek

musick; or musician

“the needle drops into the groove unstopping sleek gleek”

 

 fluxion

1 the act of flowing 2 the matter that flows 3 [In mathematicks] The arithmetick or analysis of infinitely small variable quantities; or it is the method of finding an infinite small or infinitely small quantity, which, being taken an infinite number of times, becomes equal to a quantity given. Harris.

“a washing-machine, that by fluvial fluxion flushes out infinite fluxion fragments”

 

eructation

the act of belching

“the station wagon let out a series of eructations”

 

dyspnoea

a difficulty of breathing; straitness of breath

“the dyspnoea of the emptying plughole”

 

blatteration

noise; senseless roar

“the blatteration of lawnmowers every Saturday”

 

[Selections from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]