The Net

 

I wonder how Shakespeare did it

or Wordsworth or Hopkins or Clarke

masters of semantic shifts,

innovators of compounding,

discoverers of the true sense or sense of truth

the root, the stem of words-

without the use of the internet?

 

When I go to the woods and a poem stalks me

and a line or two of it tails me back home,

something on the theme of Nature’s blessings,

I have my cable internet simulator

The YouTube dawn chorus from all over the country

and ten free hours of rain sounds from the meditationrelaxclub

 

And when I ask Google why leaves bud break in Spring?

I get one million, eight hundred and eighty thousand results

In under a second and discover that the word bless

has made a semantic leap, that it used to mean to mark with blood

which puts a different take on my morning stalker.

 

 

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard