Thoughts destined to be washed away by the tides of life. |
I've been studying my cover photo for a while now, and it seems to me that it is more than just a photo of what is there that can be seen, more than just three white rocks stacked on a beach. It contains an important question about the future, about what happens long after the photographer has gone. What will happen to our pile of stones when the tide comes in? Will it topple or has the architect built this structure at a safe distance? I don't know what will happen to these words that I stack here on the sand. They may prove safely distant, or they may be swallowed up by a rush of self-doubt. They may be here for a season. They may lose their balance and be scattered by the shoreline, or be hidden away under shifting sands. Perhaps someday, the tides of life will reclaim them. Or maybe that's just a bunch of poetic, romantic nonsense. After all, this is just a blog. |
English is not the most sensible language in the world. The rules have more exceptions than one can easily fit in a mnemonic rhyme. This is due to the vast number of words English has borrowed from other languages. This gives English a rich variety of words that one can use to convey shades of meaning to exactly capture a thought or feeling. But that also leads to confusion.Words that look alike may come from completely different roots and for that reason have different pronunciations and meanings. They may even fool us with using what appears to be the wrong plurals. For instance, the natural inclination for making the word "octopus" plural is to say "octopi". But octopus is not a Latin word, it has its roots in Greek. Octopuses is more correct. I say more correct because these days, if you can get enough people to agree to the wrong spelling/meaning/pronuciation, the dictionary will include it or even change it so that the original spelling/meaning/pronunciation is lost and found only in heavy, dusty volumes on the forgotten shelves of unvisited libraries. All of that was to lead to this question: Do you think that "synopsis" and "hypnosis"really do rhyme but we've all been brainwashed to believe otherwise? I decided that the presence of words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently is a boon to poets, because many times one can get away with a "visual rhyme". Even if words did once rhyme and now don't, who's going to tell Shakespeare he can't rhyme "flies" with "enemies"? And so I offer my visual poetry. It rhymes as long as you don't read it. Spring has sprung buds enough To thoroughly cover ev’ry bough Buds unfurled are still small though And so the Sun shines right through Rain drizzles down like sweet hypnosis So concludes my Spring synopsis |